MANU · Marine Aerosol NUcleations
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2014-03-17 → 2017-03-01
- EU contribution
- €226,444
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MC-IOF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Marine Aerosol NUcleations
MANU (Marine Aerosol NUcleation) studied the natural marine aerosol, which is of paramount importance at the global scale and influences the Earth’s radiative budget and the biogeochemical cycles. MANU aimed to directly identify the spontaneous creation of new nanometer-sized particles in the open ocean marine atmosphere and to understand the physical and chemical transformations occurring in them once formed. The project took advantage of fixed (monitoring station) and mobile (research vessel) sites over the Antarctic and Arctic, perhaps one the least studied atmospheric marine regions. Climate warming affects the development and distribution of sea ice, but at present the evidence of polar ecosystem feedbacks on climate through changes in the atmosphere is sparse. By means of synergistic atmospheric and oceanic measurements in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, we presented evidence that the microbiota of sea ice and sea ice-influenced ocean are a previously unknown significant source of atmospheric organic nitrogen, including low molecular weight alkyl-amines. Given the keystone role of nitrogen compounds in aerosol formation, growth and neutralization, our findings call for greater diversity in modelling efforts linking the marine ecosystem to aerosol-mediated climate effects in the Southern Ocean. Atmospheric new particle formation and growth significantly influences climate by supplying new seeds for cloud condensation and brightness. Currently, there is a lack of understanding of whether and how marine biota emissions affect aerosol-cloud-climate interactions in polar regions. Given the relationships between aerosol new particle formation and sea ice regions found in Antarctica, we studied longer datasets available in the Arctic regions. Arctic aerosols datasets are currently available around the Aerosol EU network of aerosol sampling stations, favoured over Antarctica for obvious reasons of proximity. Air mass trajectory analysis and atmospheric nitrogen and sulphur tracers linked frequent nucleation events to biogenic precursors released by open water and melting sea ice regions. The occurrence of such events across a full decade was anti-correlated with sea ice extent. MANU was able to boost multidisciplinary polar ocean-atmosphere science and setting the ground for conceiving and carrying out new laboratory and field studies thanks to the employment of ultra-sensitive, state-of-the-art technologies for aerosol measurements.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The topic of this proposal is the natural marine aerosol, which is of paramount importance at the global scale and influences the Earth’s radiative budget and the biogeochemical cycles. New particle formation dominates the atmospheric aerosol number budgets and most of these particles are formed by nucleation of marine biogenic vapours. MANU (Marine Aerosol NUcleations) aims to directly identify the spontaneous creation of new nanometer-sized particles in the open ocean marine atmosphere and to understand the physical and chemical transformations occurring in them once formed. MANU will (1) obtain the spatial variability of new particle formation (NPF) events in different open ocean areas, (2) elucidate the chemical composition of NPF events, (3) associate NPF events with biological processes and (4) interpret how NPF events affect the existing aerosol and its overall Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) population. The approach involves state-of-the-art mass spectrometry measurements including ATOFMS, HR-ToF-MS and Api-ToF/MS during a Southern Ocean research cruise (Hesperides, 2014) and at the Mace Head research station (Ireland, 2015). The expected outcome of this Marie Curie action is to contribute to a significant step in the career of the promising European researcher such as the candidate, specifically adding missing complementary research competencies at an advanced level of new particle formation events measurements. Additional benefits to the European knowledge-based economy and society will also come from the important return phase of the project, where the experience and the knowledge acquired as well as the contact-network built up outside Europe will be shared. This proposal is multidisciplinary because two institutions with different backgrounds (outgoing: atmospheric chemistry; return: marine biology) aims to tackle the interdisciplinary research topic of open ocean NPF events while transferring knowledge to the candidate and the public.
Original text from CORDIS.
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union