Sea spray aerosol organic enrichment, water uptake and surface tension effects

• Main Authors: Cravigan, Luke T, Mallet, Marc D, Vaattovaara, Petri, Harvey, Mike J, Law, Cliff S, Modini, Robin L, Russell, Lynn M, Stelcer, Ed, Cohen, David D, Olsen, Greg, Safi, Karl, Burrell, Timothy J, Ristovski, Zoran
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2020
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Oceanography; Atmospheric Sciences; Climate Action; Life Below Water; Astronomical and Space Sciences; Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences; Climate change science; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8fj5218q

Abstract. The aerosol-driven radiative effects on marine low-level cloud represent a large uncertainty in climate simulations, in particular over the Southern Ocean, which is also an important region for sea spray aerosol production. Observations of sea spray aerosol organic enrichment and the resulting impact on water uptake over the remote Southern Hemisphere are scarce, and therefore the region is under-represented in existing parameterisations. The Surface Ocean Aerosol Production (SOAP) voyage was a 23 d voyage which sampled three phytoplankton blooms in the highly productive water of the Chatham Rise, east of New Zealand. In this study we examined the enrichment of organics to nascent sea spray aerosol and the modifications to sea spray aerosol water uptake using in situ chamber measurements of seawater samples taken during the SOAP voyage. Primary marine organics contributed up to 23 % of the sea spray mass for particles with diameter less than approximately 1 µm and up to 79 % of the particle volume for 50 nm diameter sea spray. The composition of the submicron organic fraction was consistent throughout the voyage and was largely composed of a polysaccharide-like component, characterised by very low alkane-to-hydroxyl-concentration ratios of approximately 0.1–0.2. The enrichment of organics was compared to the output from the chlorophyll-a-based sea spray aerosol parameterisation suggested by Gantt etal. (2011) and the OCEANFILMS (Organic Compounds from Ecosystems to Aerosols: Natural Films and Interfaces via Langmuir Molecular Surfactants) models. OCEANFILMS improved on the representation of the organic fraction predicted using chlorophylla, in particular when the co-adsorption of polysaccharides was included; however, the model still under-predicted the proportion of polysaccharides by an average of 33 %. Nascent 50 nm diameter sea spray aerosol hygroscopic growth factors measured at 90 % relative humidity averaged 1.93±0.08 and did not decrease with increasing sea spray aerosol organic fractions. The ...