CountIce SIGNED

Project "CountIce" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

It is becoming increasingly clear that a class of atmospheric aerosol particles which catalyse ice formation have a profound impact on clouds, precipitation and climate. For example, recent research demonstrates that massive cloud systems the size of Western Europe are almost completely removed by sufficient ice nucleating particles. However, the global distribution of ice nucleating particles is extremely poorly characterised, in part due to the lack of instrumentation which can be used for the autonomous quantification of these important particles. In my ERC Consolidator grant (MarineIce) we have developed the first instrument to automatically measure atmospheric ice nucleating particles: the Portable expansion chamber for Ice Nucleating particle mEasurements (PINE). PINE allows the repeated formation of an artificial cloud and counting of resulting ice crystals which allows us to derive the ice nucleating particle concentration.

The overarching goal of CountIce is to demonstrate that the PINE chamber can indeed be used to quantify the ice nucleating particle concentration in the atmosphere while being autonomous, easy to use, have high sensitivity and low background counts, have a high time resolution, and work over a wide range of temperatures (relevant to the full spectrum of clouds that form in the Earth’s atmosphere). CountIce will therefore create value in PINE, allowing us to take the necessary steps towards commercial products which will be aimed at i) the atmospheric research community; ii) the cloud seeding community and the iii) the global atmospheric monitoring networks.

CountIce will give my team the time and resources needed to adapt and develop PINE into an instrument which meets the needs of paying customers, provide the demonstration of its use in an atmospheric observatory, produce technical marketing materials, assess significant markets and develop an evidence based business plan.