Atmospheric sulphur and cloud condensation nuclei in marine air in the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

Measurements of atmospheric sulphur species made in Southern Ocean air, at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, are reviewed in an attempt to discern the role played by oceanic emissions of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) as a source of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Consistent with conclusions reached by others, our data indicate that the connection between DMS concentration and CCN concentration is neither simple nor direct, being mediated through a range of chemical pathways and intermediate species that are subject to considerable variability over timescales ranging from minutes to months. Physical and meteorological processes are no less important than chemical processes as sources of complexity in the DMS to CCN transformation process. Moreover, the considerable uncertainty that currently exists about both the number of chemical pathways involved in DMS oxidation, and the kinetic coefficients associated with the proposed pathways, make quantitative modelling studies problematic. Nevertheless, synthesis of a large body of data available from Cape Grim and other Southern Ocean sites does permit some refinement of our understanding of the DMS–CCN connection. Here, these data are employed to illustrate the current state of knowledge about the connections between DMS, CCN and cloud properties at Cape Grim, and to highlight the many complexities that underlie these connections.