Effect of sea ice retreat on marine aerosol emissions in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica

Jinpei Yan; Jinyoung Jung; Qi Lin; Miming Zhang; Suqing Xu; Shuhui Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140773

Effect of sea ice retreat on marine aerosol emissions in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Nov 25:745:140773. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140773. Epub 2020 Jul 20.

Authors

Jinpei Yan¹, Jinyoung Jung², Qi Lin³, Miming Zhang³, Suqing Xu³, Shuhui Zhao³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine Atmospheric Chemistry, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China; Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China. Electronic address: jpyan@tio.org.cn.
² Korea Polar Research Institute, 26 Songdomirae-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 21990, Republic of Korea.
³ Key Laboratory of Global Change and Marine Atmospheric Chemistry, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China; Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China.

PMID: 32717597
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140773

Abstract

Sea ice retreat in the polar region is expected to increase the emissions of sea salt aerosols and biogenic gases, which may significantly impact the climate by increasing cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) population and changing solar radiation. In this study, aerosol compositions were measured at high-time-resolution (1 h) with an in-situ gas and aerosol composition monitoring system in polynya regions of the Southern Ocean (SO) to access the effects of sea ice concentrations on the sea salt aerosol (SSA) and secondary biogenic aerosol (SBA) in the SO. SSA emissions increased by more than 30% as sea ice concentration decreased from 85% to 29%. However, SSA emissions did not increase monotonically as the sea ice concentration decreased. The highest SSA concentration occurred in drifting sea ice region. Sea ice melting increased SBA concentrations by enhancing the air-sea exchanges of SBA precursor gases and the release of algae from sea ice. Positive correlations between SSA and wind speed were present in different sea ice regions, while SBA didn't reveal an obvious correlation with wind speed in the SO. The impact of wind speed on the SSA emissions were very different, Higher slope value of 41.83 and 35.81 were present in the DSI and SIF region, while the value was only about 16.74 in the SIC region. The results extended the knowledge of the effect of future sea ice retreat on marine aerosol emissions and potential climate changes in the polar region.

Keywords: Climate; Methane sulfonic acid (MSA); Nss-SO(4)(2−); Sea ice; Sea salt aerosols.