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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (3 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
Faculty Publications (2012)

Mineral aerosol deposition is recognized as the dominant source of iron to the open ocean and the solubility of iron in the dust aerosol is highly variable, with measurements ranging from 0.01-80%. Global models have difficulty capturing the observed variations in solubility, and have ignored the solubility dependence on aerosol size. We introduce two idealized physical models to estimate the size dependence of mineral aerosol solubility: a diffusion-controlled model and a surface-area-controlled model. These models produce differing time- and space-varying solubility maps for aerosol Fe and Al given the dust age at deposition, size-resolved dust entrainment fields, and the aerosol acidity. The resulting soluble iron deposition fluxes are substantially different, and more realistic, than a globally uniform solubility approximation. The surface-area-controlled solubility varies more than the diffusion-controlled solubility and better captures the spatial pattern of observed solubility in the Atlantic. However, neither of these two models explains the large solubility variation observed in the Pacific. We then examine the impacts of spatially variable, size-dependent solubility on marine biogeochemistry with the Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling (BEC) ocean model by comparing the modeled surface ocean dissolved Fe and Al with observations. The diffusion-based variable solubility does not significantly improve the simulation of dissolved Fe relative to a 5% globally uniform solubility, while the surface-area-based variable solubility improves the simulation in the North Atlantic but worsens it in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

    Cover page: Global estimates of mineral dust aerosol iron and aluminum solubility that account for particle size using diffusion-controlled and surface-area-controlled approximations
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Faculty Publications (2012)
    Mineral aerosol deposition is recognized as the dominant source of iron to the open ocean and the solubility of iron in the dust aerosol is highly variable, with measurements ranging from 0.01–80%. Global models have difficulty capturing the observed variations in solubility, and have ignored the solubility dependence on aerosol size. We introduce two idealized physical models to estimate the size dependence of mineral aerosol solubility: a diffusion-controlled model and a surface-area-controlled model. These models produce differing time- and space-varying solubility maps for aerosol Fe and Al given the dust age at deposition, size-resolved dust entrainment fields, and the aerosol acidity. The resulting soluble iron deposition fluxes are substantially different, and more realistic, than a globally uniform solubility approximation. The surface-area-controlled solubility varies more than the diffusion-controlled solubility and better captures the spatial pattern of observed solubility in the Atlantic. However, neither of these two models explains the large solubility variation observed in the Pacific. We then examine the impacts of spatially variable, size-dependent solubility on marine biogeochemistry with the Biogeochemical Elemental Cycling (BEC) ocean model by comparing the modeled surface ocean dissolved Fe and Al with observations. The diffusion-based variable solubility does not significantly improve the simulation of dissolved Fe relative to a 5% globally uniform solubility, while the surface-area-based variable solubility improves the simulation in the North Atlantic but worsens it in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
    • 1 supplemental file
    Cover page: Global estimates of mineral dust aerosol iron and aluminum solubility that account for particle size using diffusion-controlled and surface-area-controlled approximationsCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UCLA Previously Published Works (2019)
    Atmospheric deposition is a source of potentially bioavailable iron (Fe) and thus can partially control biological productivity in large parts of the ocean. However, the explanation of observed high aerosol Fe solubility compared to that in soil particles is still controversial, as several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this observation. Here, a statistical analysis of aerosol Fe solubility estimated from four models and observations compiled from multiple field campaigns suggests that pyrogenic aerosols are the main sources of aerosols with high Fe solubility at low concentration. Additionally, we find that field data over the Southern Ocean display a much wider range in aerosol Fe solubility compared to the models, which indicate an underestimation of labile Fe concentrations by a factor of 15. These findings suggest that pyrogenic Fe-containing aerosols are important sources of atmospheric bioavailable Fe to the open ocean and crucial for predicting anthropogenic perturbations to marine productivity.
      Cover page: Pyrogenic iron: The missing link to high iron solubility in aerosols
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