Articles | Volume 21, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-2287-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-2287-2021
Research article
 | 
16 Feb 2021
Research article |  | 16 Feb 2021

Impacts of coagulation on the appearance time method for new particle growth rate evaluation and their corrections

Runlong Cai, Chenxi Li, Xu-Cheng He, Chenjuan Deng, Yiqun Lu, Rujing Yin, Chao Yan, Lin Wang, Jingkun Jiang, Markku Kulmala, and Juha Kangasluoma

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Cited articles

Alam, M. K.: The Effect of van der Waals and Viscous Forces on Aerosol Coagulation, Aerosol Sci. Technol., 6, 41–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/02786828708959118, 1987. 
Anttila, T., Kerminen, V.-M., and Lehtinen, K. E. J.: Parameterizing the formation rate of new particles: The effect of nuclei self-coagulation, J. Aerosol Sci., 41, 621–636, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaerosci.2010.04.008, 2010. 
Cai, R.: Impacts of coagulation on the appearance time method for new particle growth rate evaluation and their corrections [Data set], Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4506345, 2021. 
Cai, R. and Jiang, J.: A new balance formula to estimate new particle formation rate: reevaluating the effect of coagulation scavenging, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 12659–12675, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-12659-2017, 2017. 
Cai, R., Chen, D.-R., Hao, J., and Jiang, J.: A miniature cylindrical dierential mobility analyzer for sub-3nm particle sizing, J. Aerosol Sci., 106, 111–119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaerosci.2017.01.004, 2017. 
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Short summary
Growth rate determines the survival probability of atmospheric new particles and hence their impacts. We clarify the impacts of coagulation on the values retrieved by the appearance time method, which is widely used for growth rate evaluation. A new formula with coagulation correction is proposed based on derivation and tested using both models and atmospheric data. We show that the sub-3 nm particle growth rate in polluted environments may be overestimated without the coagulation correction.
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