Glacially sourced dust as a potentially significant source of ice nucleating particles

Aeolian dusts serve as ice nucleating particles in mixed-phase clouds, and thereby alter the cloud properties and lifetime. Glacial outwash plains are thought to be a major dust source in cold, high latitudes. Due to the recent rapid and widespread retreat of glaciers, high-latitude dust emissions a...

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Veröffentlicht in:Nature geoscience 2019-04, Vol.12 (4), p.253-258
Hauptverfasser: Tobo, Yutaka, Adachi, Kouji, DeMott, Paul J., Hill, Thomas C. J., Hamilton, Douglas S., Mahowald, Natalie M., Nagatsuka, Naoko, Ohata, Sho, Uetake, Jun, Kondo, Yutaka, Koike, Makoto
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Aeolian dusts serve as ice nucleating particles in mixed-phase clouds, and thereby alter the cloud properties and lifetime. Glacial outwash plains are thought to be a major dust source in cold, high latitudes. Due to the recent rapid and widespread retreat of glaciers, high-latitude dust emissions are projected to increase, especially in the Arctic region, which is highly sensitive to climate change. However, the potential contribution of high-latitude dusts to ice nucleation in Arctic low-level clouds is not well acknowledged. Here we show that glacial outwash sediments in Svalbard (a proxy for glacially sourced dusts) have a remarkably high ice nucleating ability under conditions relevant for mixed-phase cloud formation, as compared with typical mineral dusts. The high ice nucleating ability of the sediments is probably governed by the presence of small amounts of organic matter (
ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/s41561-019-0314-x