Leaching material from Antarctic seaweeds and penguin guano affects cloud-relevant aerosol production

• Published in: Science of The Total Environment
• Main Authors: Dall'Osto, Manuel, Sotomayor Garcia, Ana, Cabrera-Brufau, Miguel, Berdalet, Elisa, Vaqué, Dolors, Zeppenfeld, Sebastian, Pinxteren, Manuela van, Herrmann, Hartmut, Wex, Heike, Rinaldi, Matteo, Paglione, Marco, Beddows, D.C.S., Harrison, Roy M., Àvila, Conxita, Martín-Martín, Rafael P., Park, Jiyeon, Barbosa, Andrés
• Other Authors: Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), National Centre for Atmospheric Science (UK), Natural Environment Research Council (UK), German Research Foundation, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2022
• Subjects: Sea spray aerosols; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Arctic; Guano; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/270832; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154772; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004837; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000662; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000270; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659

Within the Southern Ocean, the greatest warming is occurring on the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) where clear cryospheric and biological consequences are being observed. Antarctic coastal systems harbour a high diversity of marine and terrestrial ecosystems heavily influenced by Antarctic seaweeds (benthonic macroalgae) and bird colonies (mainly penguins). Primary sea spray aerosols (SSA) formed by the outburst of bubbles via the sea-surface microlayer depend on the organic composition of the sea water surface. In order to gain insight into the influence of ocean biology and bio-geochemistry on atmospheric aerosol, we performed in situ laboratory aerosol bubble chamber experiments to study the effect of different leachates of biogenic material - obtained from common Antarctic seaweeds as well as penguin guano - on primary SSA. The addition of different leachate materials on a seawater sample showed a dichotomous effect depending on the leachate material added - either suppressing (up to 52%) or enhancing (22–88%) aerosol particle production. We found high ice nucleating particle number concentrations resulting from addition of guano leachate material. Given the evolution of upper marine polar coastal ecosystems in the AP, further studies on ocean-atmosphere coupling are needed in order to represent the currently poorly understood climate feedback processes. The study was further supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy through project PI-ICE (no. CTM 2017–89117-R) and the Ramon y Cajal fellowship (no. RYC-2012-11922). This work acknowledges the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) Birmingham group is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council. We gratefully acknowledge the funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, Projektnummer 268020496–TRR 172) within the Transregional Collaborative Research Center “ArctiC Amplification: Climate Relevant Atmospheric and SurfaCe Processes, and ...