Airborne Single Particle Mass Spectrometers (SPLAT II & miniSPLAT) and New Software for Data Visualization and Analysis in a Geo-Spatial Context

• Published in: Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Vol. 26; no. 2; pp. 257 - 270
• Main Authors: Zelenyuk, Alla, Imre, Dan, Wilson, Jacqueline, Zhang, Zhiyuan, Wang, Jun, Mueller, Klaus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.02.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aerosols; Aircraft; Analytical Chemistry; Analytics; Asphericity; Bioinformatics; Biotechnology; Chemical composition; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Clouds; Condensation; Condensation nuclei; Data acquisition; Focus: Harsh Environment and Field-Portable Mass Spectrometry: Research Article; Ice nuclei; Mass spectrometers; Mass spectrometry; Multidimensional data; Nuclear electric power generation; Optical properties; Organic Chemistry; Particle mass; Power consumption; Proteomics; Scientific visualization; Software; Spatial distribution; Spectrometers; Temporal resolution; Cloud condensation nuclei; Aerosol composition; Aerosol size; Single particle mass spectrometer
• ISSN: 1044-0305; 1879-1123; 1879-1123
• DOI: 10.1007/s13361-014-1043-4

Understanding the effect of aerosols on climate requires knowledge of the size and chemical composition of individual aerosol particles—two fundamental properties that determine an aerosol’s optical properties and ability to serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei. Here we present our aircraft-compatible single particle mass spectrometers, SPLAT II and its new, miniaturized version, miniSPLAT that measure in-situ and in real-time the size and chemical composition of individual aerosol particles with extremely high sensitivity, temporal resolution, and sizing precision on the order of a monolayer. Although miniSPLAT’s size, weight, and power consumption are significantly smaller, its performance is on par with SPLAT II. Both instruments operate in dual data acquisition mode to measure, in addition to single particle size and composition, particle number concentrations, size distributions, density, and asphericity with high temporal resolution. We also present ND-Scope, our newly developed interactive visual analytics software package. ND-Scope is designed to explore and visualize the vast amount of complex, multidimensional data acquired by our single particle mass spectrometers, along with other aerosol and cloud characterization instruments on-board aircraft. We demonstrate that ND-Scope makes it possible to visualize the relationships between different observables and to view the data in a geo-spatial context, using the interactive and fully coupled Google Earth and Parallel Coordinates displays. Here we illustrate the utility of ND-Scope to visualize the spatial distribution of atmospheric particles of different compositions, and explore the relationship between individual particle compositions and their activity as cloud condensation nuclei. Graphical Abstract ᅟ