Antarctica's Unique Atmosphere: Really Low INP Concentrations

Abstract We present data on ice nucleating particles (INPs) from three Antarctic locations, a region for which INP measurements are still rare: the German Neumayer research station, contributing 2 years of data; the Belgian Princess Elisabeth station (PES) with samples from two austral summer seasons; and the region of the Antarctic Peninsula, adding data from a research cruise and subsequent land‐based sampling. While often land masses are INP sources, we found especially low INP concentrations for the two stations furthest south, Neumayer and Princess Elisabeth. At Neumayer no clear annual cycle could be identified. No strong signal from biological particles, as known to occur for example, in the summertime Arctic, was observed. Our findings suggest that Antarctica lacks INP sources, especially from the biosphere, which exist elsewhere, even in the Arctic. Furthermore, a simple INP parameterization was derived, based on the Neumayer data set and tested for data from PES.