News Headline

Exploring ocean waters to characterize atmospheric aerosols

Source
Phys.org

Publication Date
2017-03-31

Aerosols are collections of fine particles, either biological or of other types, suspended in a gaseous medium. They play a major role in cloud formation and therefore have a strong impact on climate models. They are, however, extremely hard to study due to the small size and immense variety of their constituent particles. But researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, members of the PlanetSolar Deepwater expedition, have now linked the composition of marine biological aerosols—and therefore their influence on the climate—to the composition of bodies of water within the Atlantic Ocean, thereby paving the way to an indirect study of these aerosols through water analysis. This study, which has been published in Scientific Reports, will contribute to making climate models more accurate.

Content
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-exploring-ocean-characterize-atmospheric-aerosols.html