Atmospheric loadings of marine aerosol during a Hebridean cyclone

Abstract

Abstract During a marine aerosol field trial at a coastal site in the Outer Hebrides, a depression formed in the North Atlantic, and moved directly over the site. Wind speeds on site gusted past 100m.p.h., and some data were gathered at very high wind speeds. We found that the volume of sea salt aerosol at 30 ms −1 was more than an order of magnitude higher than that at 15 ms −1 . This is contrary to previous, rather speculative, findings that the aerosol loadings of the atmosphere became less sensitive to wind speed as the wind speed increases beyond 15 ms −1 .