<title>Aerosol transport in the coastal environment and effects on extinction</title>

Abstract

The aerosol in the coastal environment consists of a complicated mixture of anthropogenic and rural aerosol generated over land, and sea spray aerosol. Also, particles are generate dover sea by physical and chemical processes and the chemical composition may change due to condensation/evaporation of gaseous materials. The actual composition is a function of air mass history and fetch. At the land-sea transition the continental sources cease to exist, and thus the concentrations of land-based particles and gases will gradually decrease. At the same time, sea spray is generated due to the interaction between wind and waves in a developing wave field. A very intense source for sea spray aerosol is the surf zone. Consequently, the aerosol transported over sea in off-shore winds will abruptly charge at the land-sea transition and then gradually loose its continental character, while also the contribution of the surf-generated aerosol will decrease. The latter will be compensated, at least in part, by the production of sea spray aerosol. A Coastal Aerosol Transport model is being developed describing the evolution of the aerosol size distribution in an air column advected from the coast line over sea in off-shore winds. Both removal and production are taken into account. The result are applied to estimate the effect of the changing size distribution on the extinction coefficients. In this contribution, preliminary results are presented from a study of the effects of the surf-generated aerosol and the surface production.