Laboratory data on the effect of salinity and temperature on sea spray aerosol production

Julika Zinke, Matthew Salter, Paul Zieger, E. Douglas Nilsson

This dataset was created in a series of laboratory experiments to investigate the role of salinity and temperature on aerosol production and surface bubble spectra.

Sea spray aerosols were generated from artificial seawater in a temperature-controlled sea spray generation chamber using a plunging jet. The aerosol and surface bubble size distributions were monitored while the salinity was decreased from 35 to 0 g/kg (at a constant temperature T = 20 °C). This experiment was repeated at a higher salinity resolution in the range 10⁠ – ⁠5 g/kg where significant impacts of changing salinity on the aerosol and bubbles were expected.

Additionally, three temperature ramps were conducted at a range of salinities representative of the global average oceanic salinity as well as lower salinity waters such as the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, where the water temperature was slowly decreased from 30 to 0 °C.

Citation

Julika Zinke, Matthew Salter, Paul Zieger, E. Douglas Nilsson (2021) Laboratory data on the effect of salinity and temperature on sea spray aerosol production. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/zinke-2021-laboratory-1

References

Zinke J, Nilsson ED, Zieger P, Salter ME (2021) The effect of seawater salinity on sea spray aerosol production. Submitted to JGR Atmospheres

Zieger P, Väisänen O, Corbin J, Partridge DG, Bastelberger S, Mousavi-Fard M, Rosati B, Gysel M, Krieger UK, Leck C, Nenes A, Riipinen I, Virtanen A, Salter ME (2017) Revising the hygroscopicity of inorganic sea salt particles. Nature Communications 8:15883. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15883

Data description

The dataset includes six xlsx spreadsheet files:

Salinity experiments

The file salinity-experiments.xlsx contains two worksheets for the two sets of salinity experiments. The size distributions, that were measured with a differential mobility particle sizer (DMPS) and optical particle size spectrometer (OPSS), were combined at 500 nm and averaged for each salinity, and are given in the form dN/dlogDp.

Bubble density

The file bubble-density.xlsx provides averaged bubble densities in the field of view at each salinity.

Temperature ramps at distinct salinities

The file temperature-ramps.xlsx contains four work sheets with averaged particle size distributions (in the form dN/dlogDp) for the temperature ramps at the salinities 35 g/kg , 17 g/kg and 6 g/kg (the temperature ramp at salinity 35 g/kg was repeated).

The measured diameters are dry diameters and were shape corrected using a dynamic shape factor calculated according to Zieger et al. (2017).

Raw data

The files DMPS_data_raw.xlsx and OPSS_data_raw.xlsx contain each two work sheets with the raw data over the entire periods of both sets of experiments (in the form dN/dlogDp), that were measured by the differential mobility particle sizer (DMPS) and optical particle size spectrometer (OPSS). The time frames of each experiment are given in the file time_frames.xlsx.

Comments

Size-resolved particle concentrations were measured with a custom-built differential mobility particle sizer that measures particles with diameter 15 nm < Dp < 900 nm and an optical particle size spectrometer that measures particles 300 nm < Dp < 10 μm. These size distributions were combined at a diameter of 500 nm. Additionally, the total number concentration was measured with a condensation particle counter.

The bubble size distribution at the water surface was determined photographically.