Development of a Suite of Balloon-borne Aerosol Instruments to Provide Size Resolved Concentration Measurements Between 0.03 and 30 Micrometers

将开发一套新的气球载气溶胶仪器，能够测量半径从0.03-30微米范围内的尺寸分布。这种能力将需要开发两个新的工具，并改进到第三个工具。目前的能力包括测量从地表到30公里范围内凝结核和可光学探测的气溶胶的仪器。这些仪器是由怀俄明大学开发的，在中纬度和极地地区进行成功测量的历史悠久。扩大后的测量将包括一台对小颗粒具有尺寸分辨率的新仪器，以及另一台对光谱大端颗粒敏感的新仪器。这项工作将提高目前通过气球测量火山静止期或背景时期平流层气溶胶浓度的能力，以捕捉重大火山喷发的影响，并继续调查极地平流层云的特征。气溶胶表面通过对氮循环的影响，在决定平流层臭氧方面起着重要作用。将目前的测量能力扩展到更低的尺度，将提供对低气溶胶负荷期间平流层气溶胶表面积的更准确估计。在这种情况下，这些颗粒的大小基本上低于目前气球上仪器的探测能力，也远低于卫星仪器的灵敏度。新的能力将有助于解决目前在现场和卫星测量之间存在的差异，提供关于背景平流层气溶胶和自由对流层气溶胶的来源和演变以及云凝结核大小的新信息。气溶胶光谱大、低浓度、末端的扩大尺寸覆盖将直接适用于回答与从极地平流层清除氮氧化物有关的问题。这一反硝化过程在确定冬季极地地区臭氧损失的持续时间方面起着关键作用。2000年在北极发现了低浓度的大颗粒在反硝化作用中的作用，目前只有几次这样的测量。目前还不知道这种过程有多普遍，颗粒可以变得多大，或者它们的尺寸分布是什么。

A suite of new balloon-borne aerosol instruments capable of making size distribution measurements spanning the range from 0.03 - 30 micrometers in radius will be developed. This capability will require the development of two new instruments, and improvements to a third. The present capability consists of instruments to measure condensation nuclei and optically detectable aerosols from the surface to 30 km. These instruments have been developed at the University of Wyoming, and have a long history of successful measurements in the mid latitudes and polar regions. The expanded measurements will include one new instrument with size resolution for small particles, and a second new instrument with sensitivity to particles at the large end of the spectrum.This work will improve present capability to perform balloon-borne measurements of stratospheric aerosol concentrations during volcanically quiescent, or background, periods, to capture the effects of major volcanic eruptions, and to continue investigations into the characteristics of polar stratospheric clouds. Aerosol surfaces play a fundamental role in determining stratospheric ozone through their influence on the nitrogen cycle. Extending present measurement capability to lower sizes will provide more accurate estimates of stratospheric aerosol surface area during periods of low aerosol loading. Under those conditions, the particles are primarily below the size detection capabilities of present balloon-borne instruments and well below the sensitivity of satellite instruments. The new capability will help resolve currently existing discrepancies between in situ and satellite measurements, provide new information on the source and evolution of both background stratospheric aerosol and free tropospheric aerosol, and the sizes of cloud condensation nuclei.The expanded size coverage at the large, low concentration, end of the aerosol spectrum will be directly applicable to answer questions related to the removal of nitrogen oxides from the polar stratosphere. This process of denitrification plays a critical role in determining the longevity of the ozone loss which occurs in the winter polar regions. The role of large particles at low concentrations in denitrification was discovered in 2000 in the Arctic and there are only a few such measurements. It is not known how prevalent this process is, how large the particles can become, or what their size distributions are.