CCN Activity, Hygroscopicity, and Droplet Activation Kinetics of Secondary Organic Aerosol Resulting from the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill

We present an analysis of the hygroscopicity and droplet activation kinetics of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) sampled onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration WP-3D aircraft downwind of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site on June 8th and 10th, 2010. This set of measurements provides a unique case study for assessing in-situ the impact of fresh, hydrocarbonlike aerosols, which are expected to be formed via gas-to-particle conversion of the semi-volatile vapors released from oil evaporation. Similar hydrocarbon-rich aerosols constitute an important local emissions source in urban areas, but often coexist as an external/partially-internal mixture with more-oxidized, aged organic and sulfate aerosol. The DWH site provides the means to study the hygroscopic properties of these less-oxidized organic aerosols above a cleaner environmental background typical of marine environments in order to better discern their contribution to CCN activity and droplet growth. Measurements were performed with a Droplet Measurement Technologies Streamwise, Thermal-Gradient CCN counter, operating both as a counter (s=0.3%) and as a spectrometer (s=0.2-0.6%) using the newly-developed Scanning Flow CCN Analysis (SFCA) technique [1]. The instrument measures both the number concentration of particles able to nucleate droplets and also their resulting droplet sizes. The measured size information combined with a comprehensive computational fluid dynamics instrument model enables us to determine the rate of water uptake onto the particles and parameterize it in terms of an effective mass transfer coefficient [2], a key parameter needed to predict the number of activated droplets in ambient clouds. Non-refractory aerosol chemical composition was measured with an Aerodyne compact time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer. It was observed that the aerosols sampled downwind of the site on both days were composed predominantly of organics with a low degree of oxidation and low hygroscopicity (κ ~ 0.05-0.1). It has been previously established for secondary organic aerosol that hygroscopicity increases with increasing oxidation (as characterized by the organic oxygen:carbon ratio) [3], and vice versa, and this dataset is used to evaluate this empirical finding. Particles measured in plumes downwind of the DWH site were seen to exhibit slow activation kinetics, consistent with a tenfold decrease in the mass transfer coefficient as compared to that of pure, ammonium sulfate. Observations of similar kinetic effects have been previously observed by Ruehl et al. in the California marine boundary layer and by Lathem and Nenes in fresh Canadian biomass burning plumes [2,4]. This study provides additional information about aerosol kinetic effects in this unique environment. [1] Moore, R. H. and A. Nenes. Aerosol Sci. Technol., 2009. [2] Lathem, T. L. and A. Nenes, in preparation. [3] Jimenez, J. L., et al. Science, 2010. [4] Ruehl, C., et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2009.