Non‐Marine Sources Contribute to Aerosol Methanesulfonate Over Coastal Seas

Abstract

AbstractMethanesulfonate (MSA) in the marine boundary layer is commonly considered to be solely contributed by the oxidation of ocean‐derived dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and often used as an indicator of marine biogenic sources. But whether this judgment is valid in coastal seas and how the validity is affected by air mass transport history have been less discussed. Based on multi‐year observations of aerosol MSA in the coastal East China Sea (ECS) and the Gulf of Aqaba (GA), as well as the analysis of air mass transport pattern and exposure to ocean surface phytoplankton biomass, we found that terrestrial sources made a non‐negligible contribution to MSA over the ECS but not over the GA. The abundant MSA in winter over the coastal ECS was likely associated with substantial emissions of volatile organic sulfur compounds from both anthropogenic and natural sources in eastern China and significant terrestrial transport influenced by the East Asian Monsoon. Good correlations between aerosol MSA and air mass exposure to surface phytoplankton biomass were established by removing the influence of terrestrial transport and confining the air transport height within boundary layer, which makes it possible to construct parameterizations for obtaining the spatiotemporal distributions of marine biogenic aerosol components using satellite ocean color datasets.