What Can We Learn From Laboratory Studies of Inorganic Sea Spray Aerosol?

Abstract:

Since 2013 we have been operating a temperature-controlled plunging-jet sea spray aerosol chamber at Stockholm University using inorganic artificial seawater. Using size-resolved measurements of the foam bubbles responsible for the aerosol production we were able to show that it is changes to these foam bubbles which drive the observed changes in aerosol production and size distribution as water temperature changes (Salter et al., 2014). Further, by combining size-resolved measurements of aerosol production as a function of water temperature with measurements of air entrainment by the plunging-jet we have developed a temperature-dependent sea spray source function for deployment in large-scale models (Salter et al., 2015).

We have also studied the hygroscopicity, morphology, and chemical composition of the inorganic sea spray aerosol produced in the chamber. The sea spray aerosol generated from artificial seawater exhibited lower hygroscopic growth than both pure NaCl and output from the E-AIM aerosol thermodynamics model when all relevant inorganic ions in the sea salt were included. Results from sensitivity tests using a large-scale earth system model suggest that the lower hygroscopicity observed in our laboratory measurements has important implications for calculations of the radiative balance of the Earth. In addition, size-dependent chemical fractionation of several inorganic ions was observed relative to the artificial seawater with potentially important implications for the chemistry of the marine boundary layer.

Each of these studies suggest that there is still much to be learned from rigorous experiments using inorganic seawater proxies.

Salter et al., (2014), On the seawater temperature dependence of the sea spray aerosol generated by a continuous plunging jet. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 119, 9052-9072, doi: 10.1002/2013JD021376

Salter et al., (2015), An empirically derived inorganic sea spray source function incorporating sea surface temperature. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, 13783-13826, doi: 10.5194/acpd-15-13783-2015