Articles | Volume 18, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2591-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2591-2025
Research article
 | 
18 Jun 2025
Research article |  | 18 Jun 2025

A view on recent ice-nucleating particle intercomparison studies: why the uncertainty of the activation temperature matters

Jann Schrod and Heinz G. Bingemer

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Cited articles

Atkinson, J., Murray, B., Woodhouse, M., Whale, T. F., Baustian, K. J., Carslaw, K. S., Dobbie, S., O'Sullivan, D., and Malkin, T. L.: The importance of feldspar for ice nucleation by mineral dust in mixed-phase clouds, Nature, 498, 355–358, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12278, 2013. 
Beall, C. M., Lucero, D., Hill, T. C., DeMott, P. J., Stokes, M. D., and Prather, K. A.: Best practices for precipitation sample storage for offline studies of ice nucleation in marine and coastal environments, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 6473–6486, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-6473-2020, 2020. 
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Short summary
Ice-nucleating particle (INP) observations often differ by 1 order of magnitude, when multiple instruments measure in parallel. As INP measurements are sensitive to the activation conditions, inaccuracies in the temperature measurement may induce significant deviations in the INP concentration. It was found that typical temperature uncertainties reported in intercomparison studies may explain divergences of a factor of 2 (± 0.5 °C) or 5 to 10 (± 1 °C) between two INP counters with opposite bias.
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