Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 43, Issue 15, Pages 8306-8313Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069070
Keywords
sea surface microlayer; marine aerosol; surfactant interactions; sea spray aerosol; organic aerosol; marine biofilms
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Funding
- Regional and Global Climate Modeling program of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science
- National Science Foundation [CHE-1026870]
- DOE [DE-AC05-76RL01830]
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Here we show that the addition of chemical interactions between soluble monosaccharides and an insoluble lipid surfactant monolayer improves agreement of modeled sea spray chemistry with observed marine aerosol chemistry. In particular, the alkane:hydroxyl mass ratio in modeled sea spray organic matter is reduced from a median of 2.73 to a range of 0.41-0.69, reducing the discrepancy with previous Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) observations of clean marine aerosol (ratio: 0.24-0.38). The overall organic fraction of submicron sea spray also increases, allowing organic mass fractions in the range 0.5-0.7 for submicron sea spray particles over highly active phytoplankton blooms. Sum frequency generation experiments support the modeling approach by demonstrating that soluble monosaccharides can strongly adsorb to a lipid monolayer likely via Coulomb interactions under appropriate conditions. These laboratory findings motivate further research to determine the relevance of coadsorption mechanisms for real-world, sea spray aerosol production.
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