CaltechAUTHORS
Published December 11, 2020 | Version Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

A link between the ice nucleation activity and the biogeochemistry of seawater

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Yale University
  • 3. ROR icon Brown University
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 5. ROR icon Beihang University
  • 6. ROR icon Peking University
  • 7. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 8. ROR icon Purdue University West Lafayette

Abstract

Emissions of ice-nucleating particles (INPs) from sea spray can impact climate and precipitation by changing cloud formation, precipitation, and albedo. However, the relationship between seawater biogeochemistry and the ice nucleation activity of sea spray aerosols remains unclarified. Here, we demonstrate a link between the biological productivity in seawater and the ice nucleation activity of sea spray aerosol under conditions relevant to cirrus and mixed-phase cloud formation. We show for the first time that aerosol particles generated from both subsurface and microlayer seawater from the highly productive eastern tropical North Pacific Ocean are effective INPs in the deposition and immersion freezing modes. Seawater particles of composition similar to subsurface waters of highly productive regions may therefore be an unrealized source of effective INPs. In contrast, the subsurface water from the less productive Florida Straits produced less effective immersion mode INPs and ineffective depositional mode INPs. These results indicate that the regional biogeochemistry of seawater can strongly affect the ice nucleation activity of sea spray aerosol.

Additional Information

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Received: 27 Apr 2020 – Discussion started: 09 Jun 2020 – Revised: 30 Oct 2020 – Accepted: 30 Oct 2020 – Published: 11 Dec 2020. The authors declare no competing financial interests. We thank our peer reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions that have improved the manuscript. We further thank the crew, technicians, and scientists on board the SSV Corwith Cramer and the R/V Falkor for their logistical and scientific support during sampling. We also thank the students of the MIT Field Oceanography Course 12.373/12.777 for their assistance sampling on board the SSV Corwith Cramer. Data availability: Data used to generate this articles's figures are included in the Supplement and a Harvard Dataverse dataset under the name: "A Link between the Ice Nucleation Activity and the Biogeochemistry of Seawater". The DOI of this dataset is: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QEJJMF (Wolf, 2020). Further data inquires can be directed to the corresponding author (Daniel Cziczo, djcziczo@purdue.edu). The supplement related to this article is available online at: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-15341-2020-supplement. Author contributions: MJW, DJC, and ARB designed the experiments and methodology. MJW, MG, ED, LAD, CZ, LJF, CS, EGR, DNN, and SM collected seawater samples, performed chemical analyses, and/or measured ice nucleation activity. MJW, DJC, and ARB prepared the manuscript with input from all coauthors. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This research has been supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative educational grant to Andrew R. Babbin. R/V Falkor ship time was awarded by a Schmidt Ocean Institute grant to Karen Casciotti and Andrew R. Babbin. The SSV Corwith Cramer expedition was funded by the MIT Houghton Fund and by the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. Review statement: This paper was edited by Paul Zieger and reviewed by Matthew Salter and one anonymous referee.

Attached Files

Published - acp-20-15341-2020.pdf

Supplemental Material - acp-20-15341-2020-supplement.pdf

Files

acp-20-15341-2020-supplement.pdf

Files (1.9 MB)

Name Size
md5:01db63668691854811658df27126e2f9
778.7 kB Preview Download
md5:77a496ca36c0e3da270ecb5775637b73
1.1 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
107368
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210107-133849997

Related works

Describes
10.5194/acp-20-15341-2020-supplement (DOI)
10.7910/DVN/QEJJMF (DOI)

Funding

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Schmidt Ocean Institute

Dates

Created
2021-01-08
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-06-02
Created from EPrint's last_modified field