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Cloud properties are strongly influenced by ice formation; hence, we need to understand the sources of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) around the globe. Boreal forests are known as sources of bioaerosol, and recent work indicates that these dominate the INP spectra above −24 °C. To quantify the INP population at temperatures below −24 °C, we deployed a portable cloud expansion chamber (PINE) in a Finnish boreal forest from 13 March 2018 to 11 May 2018. Using the 6 min time resolution PINE data, we present several lines of evidence that INPs below −24 °C in this location are also from biological sources: (i) an INP parameterization developed for a pine forest site in Colorado, where many INPs were shown to be biological, produced a good fit to our measurements; a moderate correlation of INPs with aerosol concentration larger than 0.5 µm and the fluorescent bioaerosol concentration; (ii) a negative correlation with relative humidity that may relate to enhanced release of bioaerosol at low humidity from local sources such as the prolific lichen population in boreal forests; and (iii) the absence of correlation with ultra-fine particles (3.5 to 50 nm), indicating that new particle formation events are not sources of INPs. This study should motivate further work to establish whether the commonality in bioaerosol ice-nucleating properties between spring in Finland and summer in Colorado is more generally applicable to different coniferous forest locations and times and also to determine to what extent these bioaerosols are transported to locations where they may affect clouds.

The Portable Ice Nucleation Experiment (PINE) was deployed during the Pallas Cloud Experiment (PaCE) 2022 for a three-month-period at the Sammaltunturi station in autumn 2022 (between late September 2022 and late December 2022). The station is located on top of a hill on the edge between sub-Arctic and boreal forest environments, typically receiving air masses from the Arctic and the south. Since clouds are frequently present at the station during autumn, the present aerosol particles can have a direct impact on cloud properties. Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) are aerosol particles that facilitate primary ice nucleation in supercooled cloud droplets. The PINE measured the INP concentration with a high temporal resolution of six minutes at different nucleation temperatures between 240 and 252 K. The INP concentration varied exponentially with the freezing temperature and differences between different months were observed. The highest median INP concentration was measured during December over the whole temperature range, while during November the lowest median INP concentration was measured. The data presented here is useful to study aerosol-cloud interactions for a sub-Arctic location with minimal anthropogenic influence. The high temporal resolution allows to correlate the INP concentration with other measurements, such as size distribution data and meteorological data. In addition, the data provides the ice nucleating ability of ambient aerosol particles, which can be combined with models to study the nature, the source and the age of the INPs.

Ice crystal formation in mixed-phase clouds is initiated by specific aerosol particles, termed ice-nucleating particles (INPs). Only a tiny fraction of all aerosol particles are INPs, providing a challenge for contemporary INP measurement techniques. Models have shown that the presence of INPs in clouds can impact their radiative properties and induce precipitation formation. However, for a qualified implementation of INPs in models, measurement techniques able to accurately detect the temperature-dependent INP concentration are needed. Here we present measurements of INP concentrations in ambient air under conditions relevant to mixed-phase clouds from a total of 10 INP methods over 2 weeks in October 2018 at the Puy de Dôme observatory in central France. A special focus in this intercomparison campaign was placed on having overlapping sampling periods. Although a variety of different measurement principles were used, the majority of the data show INP concentrations within a factor of 5 of one another, demonstrating the suitability of the instruments to derive model-relevant INP data. Lower values of comparability are likely due to instrument-specific features such as aerosol lamina spreading in continuous-flow diffusion chambers, demonstrating the need to account for such phenomena when interpreting INP concentration data from online instruments. Moreover, consistently higher INP concentrations were observed from aerosol filters collected on the rooftop at the Puy de Dôme station without the use of an aerosol inlet.

The formation of ice particles in Earth's atmosphere strongly influences the dynamics and optical properties of clouds and their impacts on the climate system. Ice formation in clouds is often triggered heterogeneously by ice-nucleating particles (INPs) that represent a very low number of particles in the atmosphere. To date, many sources of INPs, such as mineral and soil dust, have been investigated and identified in the low and mid latitudes. Although less is known about the sources of ice nucleation at high latitudes, efforts have been made to identify the sources of INPs in the Arctic and boreal environments. In this study, we investigate the INP emission potential from high-latitude boreal forests in the mixed-phase cloud regime. We introduce the HyICE-2018 measurement campaign conducted in the boreal forest of Hyytiälä, Finland, between February and June 2018. The campaign utilized the infrastructure of the Station for Measuring Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relations (SMEAR) II, with additional INP instruments, including the Portable Ice Nucleation Chamber I and II (PINC and PINCii), the SPectrometer for Ice Nuclei (SPIN), the Portable Ice Nucleation Experiment (PINE), the Ice Nucleation SpEctrometer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (INSEKT) and the Microlitre Nucleation by Immersed Particle Instrument (µL-NIPI), used to quantify the INP concentrations and sources in the boreal environment. In this contribution, we describe the measurement infrastructure and operating procedures during HyICE-2018, and we report results from specific time periods where INP instruments were run in parallel for inter-comparison purposes. Our results show that the suite of instruments deployed during HyICE-2018 reports consistent results and therefore lays the foundation for forthcoming results to be considered holistically. In addition, we compare measured INP concentrations to INP parameterizations, and we observe good agreement with the Tobo et al. (2013) parameterization developed from measurements conducted in a ponderosa pine forest ecosystem in Colorado, USA.