Past exam of the chemistry course of the year 4 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2021 / Interdisciplinary paper IDP1 / 3 / d

For independent first-order sinks acting on the same well-mixed burden, loss frequencies add:The fraction converted to sulfate before removal by the competing direct-deposition sink isThe individual event fractions are $0.40$ for direct sulfur dioxide deposition, $0.40$ for cloud oxidation and $0.20$ for hydroxyl radical oxidation. These are branching fractions for the sulfur dioxide fate; sulfate formed by oxidation can subsequently be deposited as well. The argument assumes the supplied channel lifetimes are compatible effective first-order rates, not residence times of isolated air masses that never exchange.

First, weakly absorbing sulfate scatters shortwave electromagnetic radiation and tends to cool the surface/planetary energy budget, with magnitude and sign influenced by cloud background and particle optics. Second, sulfate can supply cloud condensation nuclei: at fixed cloud water, more activated droplets give smaller droplets and greater cloud albedo through the Twomey effect; atmospheric precipitation and water-content adjustments can modify that idealized cooling. Third, sulfate particles change atmospheric composition through uptake, aqueous chemistry and heterogeneous surface reactions, with their acidity and available reactants controlling what is converted. Particle surfaces alone do not guarantee polar-style stratospheric chlorine activation in an ordinary tropospheric cloud.^[ref]