Measurements of bioaerosols, bacteria and ionic composition in sea spray aerosols from mesocosm experiments in the Azores

Julika Zinke, Gabriel Freitas, Matthew E. Salter, Daniel Lundin, Sneha Aggarwal, Paul Zieger, Rachel A. Foster

Measurements of bioaerosols, bacteria and ionic composition in sea spray aerosols from 20 chamber mesocosm experiments with seawater.

The measurements include bacteria enumeration and ionic composition. The bacteria cell counts from aerosol filters and seawater samples were obtained from fluorescence microscopy of 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) stained cells. The ionic composition were obtained from ion chromatography of the chamber aerosol and seawater samples are provided. The data further comprises concentration estimates of coarse particles, fluorescent particles and primary biological aerosol particles (PBAP) obtained from multiparameter bioaerosol spectrometer (MBS) measurements as well as size-resolved normalised frequency estimates of PBAP and bacterial cell counts in the aerosol and in the seawater.

The data is used to investigate the emissions of primary biological particles and bacteria with sea spray aerosols.

The seawater was sampled from the coast of Graciosa island in the Azores archipelago between 2 June and 14 July, 2022.

Citation

Julika Zinke, Gabriel Freitas, Matthew E. Salter, Daniel Lundin, Sneha Aggarwal, Paul Zieger, Rachel A. Foster (2023) Measurements of bioaerosols, bacteria and ionic composition in sea spray aerosols from mesocosm experiments in the Azores. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/zinke-2023-mesocosm-azores-1

Data description

Attached to the chamber aerosol filter samples were collected for bacteria enumeration and ionic composition analysis. At the start and end of each experiment continuous measurements were conducted of coarse particles (with diameters >0.8 µm), fluorescent particles and primary biological aerosol particles (PBAP) using a multiparameter bioaerosol spectrometer (MBS). Furthermore, seawater samples were collected at the start and end of each experiment to investigate the growth of bacterial cells over the duration of each experiment (typically 48 hours).

The dataset consists of four excel (xlsx) files. All files are also available in CSV-format.

1. bacteria-counts-aerosol-seawater-fluorescence-microscopy.xlsx Bacterial cell counts per L of air in the aerosol produced in each of the 20 mesocosm experiments as well as the bacterial cell counts per mL of seawater that were measured at the start and end of each experiment. The bacterial cell counts were determined by fluorescence microscopy of 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) stained cells.

2. ionic-concentrations-aerosol-seawater.xlsx Concentrations (in mg/L) of the anions fluoride, chloride, bromide, nitrate, sulphate and the cations sodium, ammonium, potassium, magnesium and calcium in the chamber aerosol and seawater samples. The seawater samples were diluted with ultrapure water at a ratio of 1:100 prior to analysis. Note that we have already accounted for this dilution in the data provided here. The abbreviation "SSC" denotes sea spray chamber aerosol samples and "SW" denotes seawater samples.

3. MBS-data-concentrations.xlsx contains the mean (and standard deviations) of the concentrations of coarse particles (with diameters >0.8 µm), fluorescent particles and primary biological particles (PBAP) in the chamber aerosol (per litre of air) for each experiment.

4. size-resolved-frequency-histograms-of-cell-and-PBAP-counts.xlsx Normalised frequencies of PBAP and cell counts in the chamber aerosol, as well as cell counts in the seawater in different size bins ranging from 0.1 – 10 µm.