Experimental Investigations of the Development of the Marine Aerosol Population

Abstract : This report describes a series of experiments designed to study the air mass directly above the ocean in an effort to better understand the development of the atmospheric aerosols which comprise marine haze. To determine the nature of the boundary layer haze, one must first characterize the composition and size distribution of the particles that comprise the haze, identify the source(s) of those particles and specify the source strength and growth rate of the resulting aerosol. Ultimately, of course, development of a model of the complete system is desired so that better forecasts of haze over the ocean can be made. The first set of sea measurements had two objectives: (1) to investigate the effects of environmental parameters on the emission rate of DMS from the ocean into the atmosphere, and (2) to track in the atmospheric marine boundary layer the DMS photochemistry that has been observed in laboratory photolysis studies.