Identification

Title

On the fate of aerosols produced by new particle formation in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere

Abstract

New particle formation (NPF) in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) has been suggested to contribute to cloud condensation nuclei in the troposphere, as well as for maintaining the stratospheric aerosol layer over the Asian summer monsoon (ASM). However, the fate of newly formed particles and their potential impact on climate are largely unknown. Here we use in situ aircraft measurements of aerosol size distributions collected in the UTLS over the eastern ASM region, combined with Lagrangian trajectory modeling and satellite‐derived convection, to show that NPF events primarily occur downstream of convection in the upper troposphere (below the tropopause) between 350 and 360 K potential temperature levels. While the majority of air parcels containing NPF events descend into the lower troposphere, approximately 20% of NPF event parcels ascend into the stratosphere and thereby may contribute as a source of material to the stratospheric aerosol layer.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79p363s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-07-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact