The Arctic is warming at twice the global average rate and it's for a variety of reasons. And the fundamental one is because of the increase in greenhouse gases and the heat transport to the Arctic. But there's also an effect from aerosol particles, which can contribute to either cooling or warming of the atmosphere.

My name is Trish Quinn and I am a research chemist looking at particulates in the atmosphere and how they affect climate and air quality.

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere can interact with incoming solar radiation. And so they can scatter radiation back to space or they can absorb radiation. A big piece of understanding what's going to happen in the future with climate is figuring out the role that aerosol particles are playing. So it's getting down to that fundamental question of, are aerosols contributing to the warming or are they helping slow down the warming?

Aerosol particles have a much different effect than greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases get emitted to the atmosphere and they're very long-lived. Aerosol particles, on the other hand, they are very short lived. They are only are in the atmosphere for up to one or two weeks, maybe even less. That's because they get rained out or snowed out. Their climate effect is very regional. So it's only in that region that they're going to impact either air quality or health effects or climate.

Sea spray aerosol is the largest mass of particulate matter that's ejected naturally into the atmosphere. It is responsible for most of the light scattering over the ocean, which is a way of reflecting radiation back to space. If you're out in the middle of the ocean, there's way fewer particles. Any change, even if it's a small change in those particulates, has a much bigger impact. And we really want to know how these particulates are interacting, particularly with clouds.

Currently, the way we sample is we have a mast that's as far forward and as high on the ship as we can get it, so that's about a height of 18 meters. But that's only looking at the very lower portion of the atmospheric boundary layer. So we're developing an unmanned aerial vehicle in order to combine that with the measurements we get from the surface from the ship. That will be able to sample the lower atmosphere, sample right below cloud base, figure out what particulates are actually reaching the cloud base so that we can see how they impact cloud properties.

We came up with a technique for measuring freshly-emitted sea spray aerosol. We essentially have this pontoon and this oven hood on top of it, and we deploy it over the port side of the ship. We put compressed air through, and they bubble it about 3/4 of a meter below the surface to imitate the wind-driven production of sea spray. These bubbles take up organics and inorganics as they are rising into the atmosphere.

It's important to know how the sea spray aerosol are impacting cloud properties because it could be a way to help cool the planet!

The emphasis for NOAA is on long-term observations. We're not just sitting at one spot for 20 years, but we're doing the same type of work in many different regions trying to understand how it varies regionally and how that impacts the global picture.