Sea-salt particles and the CLAW hypothesis

Michael H. Smith

doi:10.1071/EN07071

RESEARCH FRONT

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Sea-salt particles and the CLAW hypothesis

Michael H. Smith

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Email: m.h.smith@leeds.ac.uk

Environmental Chemistry 4(6) 391-395 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN07071
Submitted: 27 September 2007 Accepted: 4 November 2007 Published: 6 December 2007

Environmental context. When proposing that dimethyl sulfide (DMS) releases from phytoplankton had a role in regulating the global climate, the potential parallel influences of sea spray aerosols on climate were largely disregarded. Over the intervening 20 years, scientific studies have clearly demonstrated a substantial role for sea spray particles in modifying cloud properties and influencing global sulfur cycling, diminishing the significance of the DMS-based CLAW mechanism.

Acknowledgements

I offer grateful thanks to all the colleagues, too numerous to cite individually, who have contributed to the work described above. A special acknowledgement is due to Martin Hill, whose innovative and incisive solutions to technical and scientific problems made a vital, and occasionally unrecognised, contribution to the field work. Also, I am grateful for the helpful comments made by the reviewers of this paper.

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