Open AccessDependence of nucleation rates on sulfuric acid vapor concentration in diverse atmospheric locations
Author(s) -
Kuang C.,
McMurry P. H.,
McCormick A. V.,
Eisele F. L.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2007jd009253
Subject(s) - nucleation , sulfuric acid , exponent , particle (ecology) , cluster (spacecraft) , power law , particle number , simple (philosophy) , thermodynamics , chemistry , physics , atmospheric sciences , materials science , inorganic chemistry , mathematics , statistics , geology , linguistics , philosophy , oceanography , epistemology , computer science , programming language , volume (thermodynamics)
Correlations between concentrations of newly formed particles and sulfuric acid vapor were analyzed for twenty one nucleation events measured in diverse continental and marine atmospheric environments. A simple power law model for formation rates of 1 nm particles, J 1 = K · [ H 2 SO 4 ] P , where P and K are least squares parameters, was tested for each environment. We found that, to within experimental uncertainty, P = 2. Constraining P to 2, the prefactor K kinetic ranges from 10 −14 to 10 −11 cm 3 s −1 . According to the nucleation theorem, an exponent value of 2 indicates that the critical cluster contains two sulfuric acid molecules. Existing nucleation rate expressions based on classical nucleation theory predict significantly larger values of P . The prefactor values vary with environment and are 1 to 4 orders of magnitude below the hard‐sphere collision limit. These results provide a simple parameterization for atmospheric new particle formation that could be used in global climate models.