Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., doi:10.5194/acp-2016-136, 2016 Manuscript under review for journal Atmos. Chem. Phys. Published: 19 February 2016 c Author(s) 2016. CC-BY 3.0 License. 1 Not all feldspar is equal: a survey of ice nucleating 2 properties across the feldspar group of minerals 3 4 Alexander D. Harrison1ǂ, Thomas F. Whale1ǂ*, Michael A. Carpenter2, Mark A. 1 1 1 1 5 Holden , Lesley Neve , Daniel O’Sullivan , Jesus Vergara Temprado , Benjamin 6 J. Murray1* 7 1School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK 8 2 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 9 3EQ, UK 10 Correspondence to: T. F. Whale (
[email protected]) and B. J. Murray 11 (
[email protected]) 12 13 ǂ Both authors contributed equally to the paper 14 15 Abstract 16 Mineral dust particles from wind-blown soils are known to act as effective ice nucleating 17 particles in the atmosphere and are thought to play an important role in the glaciation of 18 mixed phase clouds. Recent work suggests that feldspars are the most efficient nucleators of 19 the minerals commonly present in atmospheric mineral dust. However, the feldspar group of 20 minerals is complex, encompassing a range of chemical compositions and crystal structures. 21 To further investigate the ice-nucleating properties of the feldspar group we measured the ice 22 nucleation activities of 15 well-characterised feldspar samples. We show that alkali feldspars, 23 in particular the potassium feldspars, generally nucleate ice more efficiently than feldspars 24 containing significant amounts of calcium in the plagioclase series.