Atmospheric Processing of Iron-Containing Mineral Dust Aerosol: A Major Source of Bioavailable Iron to Ocean Life

Abstract:

In the present day, it has become more apparent that redox reactions involving mineral dust are of great interest, especially for Fe-containing mineral dust, as they transported and deposited into certain regions of the ocean that dissolved iron is often a limiting nutrient for ocean life. Given that heterogeneous reactions of Fe-containing mineral dust with acidic gases and their precursors, i.e. HNO₃, dimethyl sulfide( DMS), lead to lower pH environments, the amount of bioavailable iron can increase as they are transported through the atmosphere. The current work focuses on chemical and photochemical processing of Fe-containing mineral dust particles in the presence of HNO₃, SO₂ and DMS under atmospherically relevant conditions. Here, various spectroscopic methods are combined with dissolution measurements to investigate atmospheric processing of iron containing aerosol dust, with a specific focus on mineralogy and environmental conditions, i.e. pH, relative humidity, temperature and solar flux. Ilmenite (FeTiO₃) is used as one of the proxies for Fe-containing minerals that have enough complexity to mimic the mineral dust, yet simple enough to know the details of the reaction pathways. During these studies, above factors are found to play significant roles in the dissolution of iron from mineral dust aerosol. More importantly, data suggest that presence of titanium in the lattice structure of ilmenite enhances iron dissolution, at least by 3-fold in a comparison with hematite. Further, growth and activity of ocean diatoms (Cyclotella meneghiniana) are monitored in the presence of Fe-containing mineral dust under the same conditions. Here, diatoms are added to the reactors containing pre-dissolved iron from a prior 48hr reaction. Results show a high correlation between the growth of diatoms and the amount of bioavailable from iron containing minerals. The current study thus highlights these important, yet unconsidered, factors in the atmospheric processing of iron-containing mineral dust aerosol.