Distribution of organics in aerosol particles from the Arctic Ocean 2018 marine aerosol reference tank experiments

Jessica A. Mirrielees, Rachel M. Kirpes, Patricia A. Matrai, Kerri A. Pratt

This dataset includes a summary of the organic compounds (detected using Raman microspectroscopy) in sea spray aerosol particles. The sea spray aerosol particles were generated during the marine aerosol reference tank (MART) experiments conducted during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition to the central Arctic Ocean in August and September 2018. The MART employed a plunging jet mechanism to generate sea spray aerosol particles.

A series of 10 aerosol generation experiments were carried out using locally collected surface water from various locations in the Arctic, including the marginal ice zone, the North Pole, several open lead sites, and a melt pond on an ice floe.

The fraction of submicron and supermicron particles assigned as carbohydrates, long-chain fatty acids, or siliceous material are given for each experiment, as well as the 95% confidence intervals for these values. This analysis was carried out for the first nine experiments but not the filtered seawater experiment.

Citation

Jessica A. Mirrielees, Rachel M. Kirpes, Patricia A. Matrai, Kerri A. Pratt (2024) Distribution of organics in aerosol particles from the Arctic Ocean 2018 marine aerosol reference tank experiments. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-ao-2018-mart-aerosol-raman-type-1

References

Cochran RE, Laskina O, Trueblood JV, Estillore AD, Morris HS, Jayarathne T, Sultana CM, Lee C, Lin P, Laskin J, Laskin A, Dowling JA, Qin Z, Cappa CD, Bertram TH, Tivanski AV, Stone EA, Prather KA, Grassian VH (2017) Molecular diversity of sea spray aerosol particles: Impact of ocean biology on particle composition and hygroscopicity. Chem 2:655⁠ – ⁠667. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2017.03.007

Laskina O, Morris HS, Grandquist JR, Estillore AD, Stone EA, Grassian VH, Tivanski AV (2015) Substrate-deposited sea spray aerosol particles: Influence of analytical method, substrate, and storage conditions on particle size, phase, and morphology. Environ Sci Technol 49:13447⁠ – ⁠13453. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b02732

Data description

The data are provided in one comma-separated values (csv) file (~2 kB).

File structure (columns) and contents:

1. name of experiment (description of water sampling location)
2. date (YYYY-MM-DD)
3. time (when surface water was sampled) in UTC (HH:MM)
4. latitude (water sampling location)
5. longitude (water sampling location)
6. number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the carbohydrate Raman spectrum
7. ±95% CI of number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the carbohydrate Raman spectrum
8. number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the “siliceous material” Raman spectrum
9. ±95% CI of number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the “siliceous material” Raman spectrum
10. number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the long-chain fatty acid Raman spectrum
11. ±95% CI of number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the long-chain fatty acid Raman spectrum
12. number fraction of supermicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the carbohydrate Raman spectrum
13. ±95% CI of number fraction of submicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the carbohydrate Raman spectrum
14. number fraction of supermicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the “siliceous material” Raman spectrum
15. ±95% CI of number fraction of supermicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the “siliceous material” Raman spectrum
16. number fraction of supermicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the long-chain fatty acid Raman spectrum
17. ±95% CI of number fraction of supermicron aerosol particles with Raman spectra that matched with the long-chain fatty acid Raman spectrum

Siliceous material is defined as in Cochran et al. (2017).

Comments

Aerosol particles were sampled from the MART using a 10-stage rotating micro-orifice uniform deposit impactor (MOUDI, model 120R, MSP Corp.) at a flow rate of 3.5 LPM. An additional 26.5 LPM of particle-free air (filtered with a 1.2 µm pore size HEPA capsule, Pall Life Sciences) resulted in a total flow rate of 30 LPM to the MOUDI. The MOUDI collected particles on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) grids, silicon, and quartz (Ted Pella, Inc) on four stages (< 0.056 µm, 0.1⁠ – ⁠0.18 µm, 0.32⁠ – ⁠0.56 µm, and 1.0⁠ – ⁠1.8 µm aerodynamic diameter) for subsequent offline single-particle analysis. Following particle collection, the substrates were stored in the dark at room temperature (Laskina et al. 2015).

Raman microspectroscopy was used to analyze individual sea spray aerosol particles collected on quartz from the MOUDI stages corresponding with the aerodynamic diameter ranges 0.32⁠ – ⁠0.56 µm and 1.0⁠ – ⁠1.8 µm. The spectrometer used for data collection was a Horiba LabRAM HR Evolution spectrometer coupled with a confocal optical microscope (100x N.A. 0.9 Olympus objective), Nd:YAG laser (50 mW, 532 nm), and CCD detector using a 600 groove/mm diffraction grating. Raman spectra were collected over the 500⁠ – ⁠4000 cm⁻¹ range with spectral resolution of ~1.8 cm⁻¹. The acquisition time for each Raman spectrum was 30 s, with three accumulations and a 20 s delay.

A minimum of 10 individual sea spray aerosol particles were analyzed on each sample. The Raman spectra were compared with a library of organic compounds (Cochran et al. 2017). Three particle types were identified using the library: carbohydrates, long-chain fatty acids, and siliceous material. Each sea spray aerosol particle was matched to one of these particle types using a χ² analysis. The fraction of the particles in each sample that were identified as carbohydrates, long-chain fatty acids, and siliceous material was then calculated.

The marine aerosol reference tank experiments were carried out during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition on board the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was made in collaboration between Sweden and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and organized by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat.

The ship track with latitude and longitude information can be found in the Navigation, meteorological and surface seawater data from the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition data set.