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Atmospheric new particle formation from the CERN CLOUD experiment

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 948–957 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere profoundly influence public health and climate. Ultrafine particles enter the body through the lungs and can translocate to essentially all organs, and they represent a major yet poorly understood health risk. Human activities have considerably increased aerosols and cloudiness since preindustrial times, but they remain persistently uncertain and underrepresented in global climate models. Here we present a synthesis of the current understanding of atmospheric new particle formation derived from laboratory measurements at the CERN CLOUD chamber. Whereas the importance of sulfuric acid has long been recognized, condensable vapours such as highly oxygenated organics and iodine oxoacids also play key roles, together with stabilizers such as ammonia, amines and ions from galactic cosmic rays. We discuss how insights from CLOUD experiments are helping to interpret new particle formation in different atmospheric environments, and to provide a mechanistic foundation for air quality and climate models.

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Fig. 1: Mechanisms for NPF in the atmosphere.
Fig. 2: Particle formation rates versus vapour concentrations for different chemical systems.
Fig. 3: Geographical locations of nucleation mechanisms measured in the laboratory by CLOUD.
Fig. 4: Two-dimensional volatility basis set for oxidation of biogenic and anthropogenic organic vapours100.

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Data availability

The CLOUD data are available from the published articles in the list of references and by request to their corresponding authors. Extended Data Table 2 provides the digital object identifier (doi) for selected CLOUD publications on nucleation and growth rates. The data for several CLOUD publications are already available on the Zenodo public repository (https://zenodo.org), hosted at CERN’s Data Centre, and the data for the remaining publications will shortly be made available on Zenodo.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the many scientists who performed the CLOUD research reported here. We thank the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) for supporting CLOUD with important technical and financial resources and for providing a particle beam from the CERN Proton Synchrotron. We thank our research institutes, national funding agencies and the European Union for providing financial support for the CLOUD experiment. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the following sources: the German Ministry of Science and Education (CLOUD-22, 01LK2201), ACCC Flagship programme of the Academy of Finland (grant nos. 337549 and 337550), the Academy of Finland (grant no. 336557), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF grant no. 200021_213071), the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna, the University of Tartu (grant no. PRG714), Horizon 2020 (EMME-CARE, 857712), Horizon Europe MSCA-DN (CLOUD-DOC, 101073026), the NASA ROSES programme (grant no. 80NSSC19K0949) and the United States National Science Foundation (NSF grant nos. NSF-AGS-2215527, NSF-AGS-1602086, NSF-AGS-213208, NSF-AGS-2215489, NSF-AGS-2027252 and NSF-AGS-2215522).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CERN, European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland

    Jasper Kirkby

  2. Institute for Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Jasper Kirkby, Joachim Curtius & Andreas Kürten

  3. CENTRA and Faculdade de Ciências, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    António Amorim

  4. Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland

    Urs Baltensperger & Imad El Haddad

  5. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Kenneth S. Carslaw

  6. Climate and Atmosphere Research Center, The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Theodoros Christoudias & Jos Lelieveld

  7. Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Neil M. Donahue & Hamish Gordon

  8. Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Richard C. Flagan

  9. Institute of Ion Physics and Applied Physics, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Armin Hansel

  10. Atmospheric Chemistry Department, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

    Hartwig Harder & Jos Lelieveld

  11. Institute of Physics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Heikki Junninen

  12. Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), Faculty of Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Markku Kulmala, Katrianne Lehtipalo & Douglas R. Worsnop

  13. Helsinki Institute of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Markku Kulmala & Katrianne Lehtipalo

  14. Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    Ari Laaksonen & Douglas R. Worsnop

  15. Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Ottmar Möhler

  16. Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ilona Riipinen

  17. TROPOS, Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany

    Frank Stratmann

  18. Institute Infante Dom Luíz, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

    Antonio Tomé

  19. Department of Applied Physics, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Annele Virtanen & Douglas R. Worsnop

  20. Department of Chemistry & CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Rainer Volkamer

  21. Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Paul M. Winkler

  22. Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica, MA, USA

    Douglas R. Worsnop

Authors
  1. Jasper Kirkby
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  2. António Amorim
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  3. Urs Baltensperger
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  4. Kenneth S. Carslaw
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  5. Theodoros Christoudias
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  6. Joachim Curtius
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  7. Neil M. Donahue
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  9. Richard C. Flagan
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  10. Hamish Gordon
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  11. Armin Hansel
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  12. Hartwig Harder
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  13. Heikki Junninen
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  14. Markku Kulmala
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  15. Andreas Kürten
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  16. Ari Laaksonen
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  17. Katrianne Lehtipalo
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  18. Jos Lelieveld
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  19. Ottmar Möhler
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  20. Ilona Riipinen
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  21. Frank Stratmann
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  22. Antonio Tomé
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  26. Douglas R. Worsnop
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J.K., A.A., U.B., K.S.C, T.C., J.C, N.M.D., I.E.H., R.C.F., H.G., A.H., H.H., H.J., M.K., A.K., A.L., K.L., J.L., O.M., I.R., F.S., A.T., A.V., R.V., P.M.W. and D.R.W. contributed to the CLOUD research reported in the manuscript. J.K. wrote the manuscript. J.K. prepared Figs. 1–3, and N.M.D. prepared Fig. 4 together with J.K. All authors contributed to and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jasper Kirkby.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Song Guo, Fangqun Yu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Xujia Jiang, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Range of parameters for all CLOUD experiments
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Extended Data Table 2 Range of parameters for selected CLOUD nucleation and growth rate experiments
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Kirkby, J., Amorim, A., Baltensperger, U. et al. Atmospheric new particle formation from the CERN CLOUD experiment. Nat. Geosci. 16, 948–957 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01305-0

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