Marine biogenic emissions of benzene and toluene and their contribution to secondary organic aerosols over the polar oceans

• Published in: Science Advances
• Main Authors: Wohl, Charel, Li, Qinyi, Cuevas, Carlos A., Fernández, Rafael P., Yang, Ming-Xi, Saiz-Lopez, A., Simó, Rafel
• Other Authors: European Commission, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Argentina)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/289437; https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add9031

11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, supplementary materials https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add9031.-- Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions of the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. The measurements and fluxes from the Southern Ocean can be accessed through the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6523780 (last access 23 November 2022). The measurements and fluxes from the Arctic can be accessed through the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.21963/13271 (last access 23 November 2022). The CAM-Chem (public version) code is available at www2.acom.ucar.edu/gcm/cam-chem (last access 23 November 2022). Some of the data presented here were collected by the Canadian research icebreaker CCGS Amundsen and made available by the Amundsen Science program, which is supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation Major Science Initiatives Fund. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of Amundsen Science or that of its partners Reactive trace gas emissions from the polar oceans are poorly characterized, even though their effects on atmospheric chemistry and aerosol formation are crucial for assessing current and preindustrial aerosol forcing on climate. Here, we present seawater and atmospheric measurements of benzene and toluene, two gases typically associated with pollution, in the remote Southern Ocean and the Arctic marginal ice zone. Their distribution suggests a marine biogenic source. Calculated emission fluxes were 0.023 ± 0.030 (benzene) and 0.039 ± 0.036 (toluene) and 0.023 ± 0.028 (benzene) and 0.034 ± 0.041 (toluene) μmol m−2 day−1 for the Southern Ocean and the Arctic, respectively. Including these average emissions in a chemistry-climate model increased secondary organic aerosol mass concentrations only by 0.1% over the Arctic but by 7.7% over the Southern Ocean, with transient episodes of up to 77.3%. Climate models should consider the hitherto overlooked emissions of benzene and ...