Department of Earth System Science

The first deployment of an emission-based aerosol sodium detector (ASD), designed to chemically characterize marine aerosols on a near-real-time basis, is reported. Deployment occurred as part of the Shoreline Environment Aerosol Study (SEAS) from 16 April to 1 May 2000 at Bellows Air Force Base on the east side of Oahu, where the University of Hawaii's Department of Oceanography maintains a tower for aerosol measurements. The instrument was operated in size-unsegregated mode and measurements were made that included two extended continuous sampling periods, each of which lasted for 24 h. During this time, the ASD was compared with measurements that used aerosol volatility coupled with optical particle counting to infer sea-salt size distributions. A reasonable agreement was obtained between the instruments when sampling in clean air, suggesting that under these conditions both approaches can provide reliable sea-salt distributions. The combination of these measurements suggested that sea salt was the dominant constituent of aerosol particles with diameters larger than 500 nm and that sulfate was the dominant constituent at smaller diameters during clean air sampling.