SOSAA — a new model to simulate the concentrations of organic vapours, sulphuric acid and aerosols inside the ABL : Part 2: Aerosol dynamics and one case study at a boreal forest site

Natural and anthropogenic aerosols may have a great impact on climate as they directly interact with solar radiation and indirectly affect the Earth’s radiation balance and precipitation by modifying clouds. In order to quantify the direct and indirect effects, it is essential to understand the complex processes that connect aerosol particles to cloud droplets. Modern measurement techniques are able to detect particle sizes down to 1 nm in diameter, from ground to the stratosphere. However, the data are not sufficient in order to fully understand the processes. Here we demonstrate how the newly developed one-dimensional column model SOSAA was used to investigate the complex processes of aerosols at a boreal forest site for a six-month period during the spring and summer of 2010. Two nucleation mechanisms (kinetic and organic) were tested in this study, and both mechanisms produced a good prediction of the particle number concentrations in spring. However, overestimation of the particle number concentration in summer by the organic mechanism suggests that the OH oxidation products from monoterpenes may not be the essential compounds in atmospheric nucleation. In general, SOSAA was correct in predicting new particle formation events for 35% of the time and partly correct for 45% of the time.