Arctic Summer Cloud-Ocean Study
Bubble sizes in the water
Gas bubbles formed in the upper ocean will generate droplets in the air above the surface when they burst. Two types of droplets are generated; so-called film droplets which is the remnants of the inner surface of the bubble, and so-called jet droplets which are formed by the (due to the pressure difference) jet of liquid that shoots upward from the bottom of the bubble as its upper rim breaks the surface. Both types of droplets may evaporate and what soluble or insoluble material that might be in the droplets, emanating from the upper ocean surface, will remain airborne as an aerosol. This is a well-known mechanism whereby, for example. Breaking wind waves generate so-called sea-salt aerosols. In the Arctic, with short fetch over open water, it is not obvious that bubbles will form; hence during ASCOS we deployed in the upper water column a system to measure number and size of bubbles.
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Photo (not from ASCOS) of the bubble camera installation, with the flotation device (orange) and below it the bubble camera itself.