Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Methodology

۳٫ Results and discussion

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgement

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Disclaimer

Research Data

References

ABSTRACT

We implement oceanic dimethylsulfide (DMS) emissions and its atmospheric chemical reactions into the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQv53) model and perform annual simulations without and with DMS chemistry to quantify its impact on tropospheric composition and air quality over the Northern Hemisphere. DMS chemistry enhances both sulfur dioxide (SO2) and sulfate (SO2− ۴ ) over seawater and coastal areas. It enhances annual mean surface SO2 concentration by +46 pptv and SO2− ۴ by +0.33 μg/m3 and decreases aerosol nitrate concentration by − ۰٫۰۷ μg/m3 over seawater compared to the simulation without DMS chemistry. The changes decrease with altitude and are limited to the lower atmosphere. Impacts of DMS chemistry on SO2− ۴ are largest in the summer and lowest in the fall due to the seasonality of DMS emissions, atmospheric photochemistry and resultant oxidant levels. Hydroxyl and nitrate radical-initiated pathways oxidize 75% of the DMS while halogeninitiated pathways oxidize 25%. DMS chemistry leads to more acidic particles over seawater by decreasing aerosol pH. Increased SO2− ۴ from DMS enhances atmospheric extinction while lower aerosol nitrate reduces the extinction so that the net effect of DMS chemistry on visibility tends to remain unchanged over most of the seawater.

۱٫ Introduction

In the 30+ years since Charlson et al. (1987) hypothesized that biogenically-produced dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from marine phytoplankton participates in a negative climate feedback loop affecting cloud condensation nuclei and cloudiness, the study of DMS from the world’s oceans has been a vigorous area of research. Though the CLAW hypothesis (named after the authors of Charlson et al., 1987) has been criticized as too simplistic (Quinn and Bates, 2011), the resulting knowledge gained about the sources, oceanic concentrations, and emissions of oceanic DMS has enabled chemical transport and earth systems models to realistically simulate its impacts on air quality and climate. DMS in the ocean is produced from the breakdown of dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) generated from microalgal metabolic processes and exudation/mortality (Stefels et al., 2007). The concentration of DMS in seawater has been sampled extensively, leading to the construction of the Global Surface Seawater DMS Database (http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/dms) and interpolated estimates of the global concentration distribution (Kettle et al., 1999; Kettle and Andreae, 2000). An updated climatology of oceanic DMS concentrations using over 47,000 measurements was reported by Lana et al. (2011).