There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Aerosol particles produced over forested areas may affect climate by acting as nuclei
for cloud condensation, but their composition (and hence the chemical species that
drive their production) remains an open question. Here we show, to our knowledge for
the first time, that these newly formed particles (3-5 nm in diameter) are composed
primarily of organic species, such as cis-pinonic acid and pinic acid, produced by
oxidation of terpenes in organic vapours released from the canopy.