The California Research at the Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Change (CalNex) field study was conducted throughout California in May, June, and July of 2010. The study was organized to address issues simultaneously relevant to atmospheric pollution and climate change, including (1) emission inventory assessment, (2) atmospheric transport and dispersion, (3) atmospheric chemical processing, and (4) cloud‐aerosol interactions and aerosol radiative effects. Measurements from networks of ground sites, a research ship, tall towers, balloon‐borne ozonesondes, multiple aircraft, and satellites provided in situ and remotely sensed data on trace pollutant and greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol chemical composition and microphysical properties, cloud microphysics, and meteorological parameters. This overview report provides operational information for the variety of sites, platforms, and measurements, their joint deployment strategy, and summarizes findings that have resulted from the collaborative analyses of the CalNex field study. Climate‐relevant findings from CalNex include that leakage from natural gas infrastructure may account for the excess of observed methane over emission estimates in Los Angeles. Air‐quality relevant findings include the following: mobile fleet VOC significantly declines, and NOx emissions continue to have an impact on ozone in the Los Angeles basin; the relative contributions of diesel and gasoline emission to secondary organic aerosol are not fully understood; and nighttime NO3 chemistry contributes significantly to secondary organic aerosol mass in the San Joaquin Valley. Findings simultaneously relevant to climate and air quality include the following: marine vessel emissions changes due to fuel sulfur and speed controls result in a net warming effect but have substantial positive impacts on local air quality.

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High altitude cirrus clouds play an important role in the terrestrial radiation budget. Cirrus clouds are composed of ice particles that generally form on only a small subset, from 1 in 10 to 1 in 10 5 , of the background aerosol. Ice particles may form due to the homogeneous freezing of aqueous aerosols or by the action of heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN). IN possess the ability to form ice at a higher temperature for a given vapor pressure of water than is required for homogeneous freezing. Apart from a few studies of refractory components, the chemical composition of these climatically important particles remains largely unknown. Almost nothing has been reported about the semivolatile and volatile components of IN. One of the principal reasons is that collection of cirrus precursors ideally should take place immediately after ice formation, before significant alteration of the crystals due to particle and gas-phase scavenging. Here we describe a method to measure the concentration and activation conditions of aerosols by exposure to temperatures and relative humidities (RH) similar to those that initiate cirrus cloud formation in the atmosphere. Laser mass spectrometry was subsequently used to investigate only those particles that nucleated ice. With this technique we were able to differentiate particles known to act as IN from those that entered the ice phase homogeneously. Deployment to study aerosol effects on ice formation in cirrus clouds is presented, although this method is applicable to the entire tropospheric mixed-phase and ice-phase regimes.