Journal or chapter

Constraining the surface flux of sea spray particles from the Southern Ocean

Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheres (2019)

Modelling the shortwave radiation balance over the Southern Ocean region remains a challenge for Earth system models.

To investigate whether this is related to the representation of aerosol-cloud interactions, we compared measurements of the total number concentration of sea spray generated particles within the Southern Ocean region to model predictions thereof. We used source-receptor modelling to calculate the sensitivity of our measurements to upwind surface fluxes.

Comparisons to existing model parameterizations revealed that present model parameterizations led to over-estimations of sea spray concentrations. We show that the parameterization can also be applied globally.