Speciation of Organic Aerosols in the Tropical Mid-Pacific and Their Relationship to Light Scattering

Abstract

Although the importance of the aerosol contribution to the global radiative budget has been recognized, the forcings of aerosols in general, and specifically the role of the organic component in these forcings, still contain large uncertainties. In an attempt to better understand the relationship between the background forcings of aerosols and their chemical speciation, marine air samples were collected off the windward coast of Oahu, Hawaii, during the Rough Evaporation Duct project (RED) using filters mounted on both the Twin Otter aircraft and the Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) research platform. Laboratory analysis revealed a total of 17 species, including 4 carboxylic acids and 2 carbohydrates that accounted for 74% ± 20% of the mass gain observed on the shipboard filters, suggesting a possible significant unresolved organic component. The results were correlated with in situ measurements of particle light scattering (σsp) at 550 nm and with aerosol hygroscopicities. Principal component analysis revealed a small but ubiquitous pollution component affecting the σsp and aerosol hygroscopicity of the remote marine air. The Princeton Organic-Electrolyte Model (POEM) was used to predict the growth factor of the aerosols based upon the chemical composition. This output, coupled with measured aerosol size distributions, was used to attempt to reproduce the observed σsp. It was found that while the POEM model was able to reproduce the expected trends when the organic component of the aerosol was varied, due to large uncertainties especially in the aerosol sizing measurements, the σsp predicted by the POEM model was consistently higher than observed.