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Recent studies have shown the importance of new particle formation (NPF) to global cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) production, as well as to air pollution in megacities. In addition to the necessary presence of low-volatility vapors that can form new aerosol particles, both numerical and observational studies have shown that the dynamics of the planetary boundary layer (BL) plays an important role in NPF. Evidence from field observations suggests that roll vortices might be favorable for inducing NPF in a convective BL. However, direct observations and estimates of the potential importance of this phenomenon to the production of new aerosol particles are lacking. Here we show that rolls frequently induce NPF bursts along the horizontal circulations and that the small clusters and particles originating from these localized bursts grow in size similar to particles typically ascribed to atmospheric NPF that occur almost homogeneously at a regional scale. We outline a method to identify roll-induced NPF from measurements and, based on the collected data, estimate the impact of roll vortices on the overall aerosol particle production due to NPF at a boreal forest site (83 % ± 34 % and 26 % ± 8 % overall enhancement in particle formation for 3 and 10 nm particles, respectively). We conclude that the formation of roll vortices should be taken into account when estimating particle number budgets in the atmospheric BL.

This work presents airborne observations of sub-3 nm particles in the lower troposphere and investigates new particle formation (NPF) within an evolving boundary layer (BL). We studied particle concentrations together with supporting gas and meteorological data inside the planetary BL over a boreal forest site in Hyytiälä, southern Finland. The analysed data were collected during three flight measurement campaigns: May–June 2015, August 2015 and April–May 2017, including 27 morning and 26 afternoon vertical profiles. As a platform for the instrumentation, we used a Cessna 172 aircraft. The analysed flight data were collected horizontally within a 30 km distance from SMEAR II in Hyytiälä and vertically from 100 m above ground level up to 2700 m. The number concentration of 1.5–3 nm particles was observed to be, on average, the highest near the forest canopy top and to decrease with increasing altitude during the mornings of NPF event days. This indicates that the precursor vapours emitted by the forest play a key role in NPF in Hyytiälä. During daytime, newly formed particles were observed to grow in size and the particle population became more homogenous within the well-mixed BL in the afternoon. During undefined days with respect to NPF, we also detected an increase in concentration of 1.5–3 nm particles in the morning but not their growth in size, which indicates an interrupted NPF process during these undefined days. Vertical mixing was typically stronger during the NPF event days than during the undefined or non-event days. The results shed light on the connection between boundary layer dynamics and NPF.

Snow consists of non-spherical grains of various shapes and sizes. Still, in radiative transfer calculations, snow grains are often treated as spherical. This also applies to the computation of snow albedo in the Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiation (SNICAR) model and in the Los Alamos sea ice model, version 4 (CICE4), both of which are employed in the Community Earth System Model and in the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM). In this study, we evaluate the effect of snow grain shape on climate simulated by NorESM in a slab ocean configuration of the model. An experiment with spherical snow grains (SPH) is compared with another (NONSPH) in which the snow shortwave single-scattering properties are based on a combination of three non-spherical snow grain shapes optimized using measurements of angular scattering by blowing snow. The key difference between these treatments is that the asymmetry parameter is smaller in the non-spherical case (0.77–0.78 in the visible region) than in the spherical case ( ≈ 0.89). Therefore, for the same effective snow grain size (or equivalently, the same specific projected area), the snow broadband albedo is higher when assuming non-spherical rather than spherical snow grains, typically by 0.02–0.03. Considering the spherical case as the baseline, this results in an instantaneous negative change in net shortwave radiation with a global-mean top-of-the-model value of ca. −0.22 W m−2. Although this global-mean radiative effect is rather modest, the impacts on the climate simulated by NorESM are substantial. The global annual-mean 2 m air temperature in NONSPH is 1.17 K lower than in SPH, with substantially larger differences at high latitudes. The climatic response is amplified by strong snow and sea ice feedbacks. It is further demonstrated that the effect of snow grain shape could be largely offset by adjusting the snow grain size. When assuming non-spherical snow grains with the parameterized grain size increased by ca. 70 %, the climatic differences to the SPH experiment become very small. Finally, the impact of assumed snow grain shape on the radiative effects of absorbing aerosols in snow is discussed.

Human actions, motivated by social and economic driving forces, generate various pressures on biodiversity, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, land use related disturbance patterns, or species invasions that have an impact on biodiversity from the genetic to the ecosystem level. Each of these factors acts at characteristic scales, and the scales of social and economic demands, of environmental pressures, of biodiversity impacts, of scientific analysis, and of governmental responses do not necessarily match. However, management of the living world will be effective only if we understand how problems and solutions change with scale. SCALES (http://www.scales-project.net), a research project lasting for five years from May 2009 to July 2014, was seeking for ways to build the issue of scale into policy and decision-making and biodiversity management. It has greatly advanced our knowledge of how anthropogenic and natural processes interact across scales and affect biodiversity and it has evaluated in a very practical way how this knowledge can be used to improve the scale-sensitivity and effectiveness of policy instruments for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. During the project we have especially emphasized approaches that utilize existing biodiversity databases as they are the most widely available information in applied biodiversity conservation. We also tried to integrate the most appropriate assessment tools and policy instruments into a coherent framework to support biodiversity conservation across spatial and temporal scales. While the guidelines, practical solutions and special tools are presented as a special web based portal at a central place, the SCALETOOL (http://scales.ckff.si/scaletool/), the scientific outcome is widely spread over the scientific literature in regional and international journals. With the SCALES book we want to bundle the main results of SCALES in a comprehensive manner and present it in a way that is usable not only for pure scientists but also for people making decisions in administration, management, policy or even business and NGOs; to people who are more interested in the “practical” side of this issue. Yrjö Haila, Tampere