Abstract. Snow in the environment acts as a host to rich chemistry and provides a matrix for physical exchange of contaminants within the ecosystem. The goal of this review is to summarise the current state of knowledge of physical processes and chemical reactivity in surface snow with relevance to polar regions. It focuses on a description of impurities in distinct compartments present in surface snow, such as snow crystals, grain boundaries, crystal surfaces, and liquid parts. It emphasises the microscopic description of the ice surface and its link with the environment. Distinct differences between the disordered air–ice interface, often termed quasi-liquid layer, and a liquid phase are highlighted. The reactivity in these different compartments of surface snow is discussed using many experimental studies, simulations, and selected snow models from the molecular to the macro-scale. Although new experimental techniques have extended our knowledge of the surface properties of ice and their impact on some single reactions and processes, others occurring on, at or within snow grains remain unquantified. The presence of liquid or liquid-like compartments either due to the formation of brine or disorder at surfaces of snow crystals below the freezing point may strongly modify reaction rates. Therefore, future experiments should include a detailed characterisation of the surface properties of the ice matrices. A further point that remains largely unresolved is the distribution of impurities between the different domains of the condensed phase inside the snowpack, i.e. in the bulk solid, in liquid at the surface or trapped in confined pockets within or between grains, or at the surface. While surface-sensitive laboratory techniques may in the future help to resolve this point for equilibrium conditions, additional uncertainty for the environmental snowpack may be caused by the highly dynamic nature of the snowpack due to the fast metamorphism occurring under certain environmental conditions. Due to these gaps in knowledge the first snow chemistry models have attempted to reproduce certain processes like the long-term incorporation of volatile compounds in snow and firn or the release of reactive species from the snowpack. Although so far none of the models offers a coupled approach of physical and chemical processes or a detailed representation of the different compartments, they have successfully been used to reproduce some field experiments. A fully coupled snow chemistry and physics model remains to be developed.

We look ahead from the frontiers of research on ice dynamics in its broadest sense; on the structures of ice, the patterns or morphologies it may assume, and the physical and chemical processes in which it is involved. We highlight open questions in the various fields of ice research in nature; ranging from terrestrial and oceanic ice on Earth, to ice in the atmosphere, to ice on other solar system bodies and in interstellar space.

Many organisms are protected from freezing by the presence of extracellular antifreeze proteins (AFPs), which bind to ice, modify its morphology, and prevent its further growth. These proteins have a wide range of applications including cryopreservation, frost protection, and as models in biomineralization research. However, understanding their mechanism of action remains an outstanding challenge. While the prevailing adsorption-inhibition hypothesis argues that AFPs must bind irreversibly to ice to arrest its growth, other theories suggest that there is exchange between the bound surface proteins and the free proteins in solution. By conjugating green fluorescence protein (GFP) to a fish AFP (Type III), we observed the binding of the AFP to ice. This was accomplished by monitoring the presence of GFP-AFP on the surface of ice crystals several microns in diameter using fluorescence microscopy. The lack of recovery of fluorescence after photobleaching of the GFP component of the surface-bound GFP-AFP shows that there is no equilibrium surface-solution exchange of GFP-AFP and thus supports the adsorption-inhibition mechanism for this type of AFP. Moreover, our study establishes the utility of fluorescently labeled AFPs as a research tool for investigating the mechanisms underlying the activity of this diverse group of proteins.

Deposition of water on aerosol particles contributes to ice cloud formation in the atmosphere with implications for the water cycle and climate on Earth. The heterogeneous ice nucleation process is influenced by physico-chemical properties of the substrate, but the mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Here, we report on ice formation on bare and alcoholcovered graphite at temperatures from 175 to 213 K, probed by elastic helium and light scattering. Water has a low wettability on bare and butanol-covered graphite resulting in the growth of rough ice surfaces. In contrast, pre-adsorbed methanol provides hydrophilic surface sites and results in the formation of smooth crystalline ice; an effect that is pronounced also for sub-monolayer methanol coverages. The alcohols primarily reside at the ice surface and at the ice-graphite interface with a minor fraction being incorporated into the growing ice structures. Methanol has no observable effect on gas/solid water vapor exchange whereas butanol acts as a transport barrier for water resulting in a reduction in ice evaporation rate at 185 K. Implications for the description of deposition mode freezing are discussed.

The interaction of water vapor with ice remains incompletely understood despite its importance in environmental processes. A particular concern is the probability for water accommodation on the ice surface, for which results from earlier studies vary by more than 2 orders of magnitude. Here, we apply an environmental molecular beam method to directly determine water accommodation and desorption kinetics on ice. Short D2O gas pulses collide with H2O ice between 170 and 200 K, and a fraction of the adsorbed molecules desorbs within tens of milliseconds by first order kinetics. The bulk accommodation coefficient decreases nonlinearly with increasing temperature and reaches 0.41 ± 0.18 at 200 K. The kinetics are well described by a model wherein water molecules adsorb in a surface state from which they either desorb or become incorporated into the bulk ice structure. The weakly bound surface state affects water accommodation on the ice surface with important implications for atmospheric cloud processes.

Molecular scattering experiments are used to investigate water interactions with methanol and n-butanol covered ice between 155 K and 200 K. The inelastically scattered and desorbed products of an incident molecular beam are measured and analyzed to illuminate molecular scale processes. The residence time and uptake coefficients of water impinging on alcohol-covered ice are calculated. The surfactant molecules are observed to affect water transport to and from the ice surface in a manner that is related to the number of carbon atoms they contain. Butanol films are observed to reduce water uptake by ice by 20%, whereas methanol monolayers pose no significant barrier to water transport. Water colliding with methanol covered ice rapidly permeates the alcohol layer, but on butanol has mean surface lifetimes of ≲0.6 ms, enabling some molecules to thermally desorb before reaching the water ice underlying the butanol. These observations are put into the context of cloud and atmospheric scale processes, where such surfactant layers may affect a range of aerosol processes, and thus have implications for cloud evolution, the global water cycle, and long term climate

Ice and snow in the environment are important because they not only act as a host to rich chemistry but also provide a matrix for physical exchanges of contaminants within the ecosystem. This review discusses how the structure of snow influences both chemical reactivity and physical processes, which thereby makes snow a unique medium for study. The focus is placed on impacts of the presence of liquid and surface disorder using many experimental studies, simulations, and field observations from the molecular to the micro-scale

Abstract. Recently significant advances have been made in the collection, detection and characterization of ice nucleating particles (INPs). Ice nuclei are particles that facilitate the heterogeneous formation of ice within the atmospheric aerosol by lowering the free energy barrier to spontaneous nucleation and growth of ice from atmospheric water and/or vapor. The Frankfurt isostatic diffusion chamber (FRankfurt Ice nucleation Deposition freezinG Experiment: FRIDGE) is an INP collection and offline detection system that has become widely deployed and shows additional potential for ambient measurements. Since its initial development FRIDGE has gone through several iterations and improvements. Here we describe improvements that have been made in the collection and analysis techniques. We detail the uncertainties inherent in the measurement method and suggest a systematic method of error analysis for FRIDGE measurements. Thus what is presented herein should serve as a foundation for the dissemination of all current and future measurements using FRIDGE instrumentation.