Organic Contribution on Particles Formed on Pacific Ocean: From Phytoplankton Blooms to Climate

Abstract

These SOAP project Pacific Ocean measurements reveal that phytoplankton blooms with sunny conditions make possible secondary organic contribution to ultrafine particles size and composition, and thus on cloud formation ability, and finally on climate. This is in agreement with other biologically active region observations about the presence of secondary organics even the exact fraction is also depending on the local marine life (e.g. plankton blooms, seaweeds, corals). An organic contribution is clearly needed to add to CLAW hypothesis. Keywords—Climate, marine aerosols, phytoplankton, secondary organics, CLAW hypothesis. I. INTRODUCTION ARINE biologically active regions (e.g., coasts, ice edges, frontal regions and open water areas with plankton blooms) are known to produce a range of compounds that interact with atmosphere affecting directly and indirectly particle production, composition, and wider properties of the marine atmosphere. Whilst the CLAW (Charlson, Lovelock, Andreae and Warren) hypothesis (1) supports the idea of the importance of marine biological activity on ultrafine (d<100nm) particle composition and effects through secondary sulphate production via DMS, this hypothesis does not take into account the secondary organic fraction in the composition of the ultrafine particles even though the aerosols are elsewhere typically known to consist of both organic and inorganic compounds whose relative ratios strongly depend on the environmental conditions, where the emissions of various gases and particles define the overall compositions and properties of ultrafine particles. So far, recent observations about the presence of a remarkable marine-origin secondary organic fraction in