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Updated: Aug 23, 2025

Ice Generation and the Heat and Mass Transfer Phenomena of Introducing Water to a Cold Bath of Brine
Published on: March 13, 2017
Ice-nucleating agents in sea spray aerosol identified and quantified with a holistic multimodal freezing model
Peter A Alpert1,2, Wendy P Kilthau2, Rachel E O'Brien3,4,5
1Paul Scherrer Institute, Laboratory for Environmental Chemistry, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Sea spray aerosol (SSA) is a widely recognized important source of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) in the atmosphere. However, composition-specific identification, nucleation processes, and ice nucleation rates of SSA-INPs have not been well constrained. Microspectroscopic characterization of ambient and laboratory-generated SSA confirms that water-borne exudates from planktonic microorganisms composed of a mixture of proteinaceous and polysaccharidic compounds act as ice-nucleating agents (INAs). These data and data from previously published mesocosm and wave channel studies are subsequently used to further develop the stochastic freezing model (SFM) producing ice nucleation rate coefficients for SSA-INPs. The SFM simultaneously predicts immersion freezing and deposition and homogeneous ice nucleation by SSA particles under tropospheric conditions. Predicted INP concentrations agree with ambient and laboratory measurements. In addition, this holistic freezing model is independent of the source and exact composition of the SSA particles, making it well suited for implementation in cloud and climate models.
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