Eddy Covariance Measurements of Turbulent Fluxes of Atmospheric Aerosols From a Moving Ship From the Sea of Okhotsk to the Arctic Ocean

Recent studies of emission and deposition of atmospheric aerosols employing the eddy covariance technique (EC) have been conducted in the terrestrial and marine boundary layer, the latter mainly limited to fixed platforms in the coastal domain. The captioned approach enables us to study the sinks and sources of atmospheric aerosols and their impact on the sea/air exchange of materials and on the direct and indirect radiation effect in the marine boundary layer from moving platforms, such as vessels. Measurements of atmospheric parameters from a ship are challenging especially due to the flow distortion caused by the ship's superstructure and the vessel's motions. It is known from recent work employing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on the geometry of vessels, that the most suitable place for undistorted measurements is at the very bow and the most elevated location, commonly the foremast. For this reason, the entire eddy covariance instrumentation was fixed at the very top of the foremast, consisting of: sonic anemometer, condensation particle counter (CPC, from 5 nm particle diameter), fog droplet spectrometer (2 to 50 μm droplet diameter), CO{_2}/H{_2}O Analyser and an inertial sensing system. In order to operate the CPC also while the vessel is underway or in rough sea conditions, the max tilt angle (rolling and pitching) of the CPC was technically improved from 10° up to over 30°. This EC-measurement was conducted over the high primary productive region with high frequency of sea fog appearance during the cruise MR06-4 on R/V Mirai from Hokkaido, Japan, to the Chukchi Sea in Arctic Ocean, lasting from August 2 through September 29, 2006. Initial results will be presented and discussed.