Immersion freezing of ice nucleating active protein complexes

Abstract

Abstract. Biological particles, e.g. bacteria and their Ice Nucleating Active (INA) protein complexes, might play an important role for the ice formation in atmospheric mixed-phase clouds. Therefore, the immersion freezing behavior of INA protein complexes generated from a SnomaxTM solution/suspension was investigated as function of temperature in a range of −5 °C to −38 °C at the Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator (LACIS). The immersion freezing of droplets containing small numbers of INA protein complexes occurs in a temperature range of −7 °C and −10 °C. The experiments performed in the lower temperature range, where all droplets freeze which contain at least one INA protein complex, are used to determine the average number of INA protein complexes present, assuming that the INA protein complexes are Poisson distributed over the droplet ensemble. Knowing the average number of INA protein complexes, the heterogeneous ice nucleation rate and rate coefficient of a single INA protein complex is determined by using the newly-developed CHESS model (stoCHastic model of idEntical poiSSon distributed ice nuclei). Therefore, we assume the ice nucleation process to be of stochastic nature, and a parameterization of the INA protein complex's nucleation rate. Analyzing the results of immersion freezing experiments from literature (SnomaxTM and Pseudomonas syringae bacteria), to results gained in this study, demonstrates that first, a similar temperature dependence of the heterogeneous ice nucleation rate for a single INA protein complex was found in all experiments, second, the shift of the ice fraction curves to higher temperatures can be explained consistently by a higher average number of INA protein complexes being present in the droplet ensemble, and finally the heterogeneous ice nucleation rate of one single INA protein complex might be also applicable for intact Pseudomonas syringae bacteria cells. The results obtained in this study allow a new perspective on the interpretation of immersion freezing experiments considering INA protein complexes and the derived simple parameterization of the heterogeneous ice nucleation rate can be used in cloud resolving models for studying the effect of bacteria induced ice nucleation.