ORCID

0000-0001-6694-7334 (Williams)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adq2465

Publication Title

Science Advances

Volume

10

Issue

48

Pages

eadq2465 (1-9)

Abstract

Ocean-emitted dimethyl sulfide (DMS) is a major source of climate-cooling aerosols. However, most of the marine biogenic sulfur cycling is not routed to DMS but to methanethiol (MeSH), another volatile whose reactivity has hitherto hampered measurements. Therefore, the global emissions and climate impact of MeSH remain unexplored. We compiled a database of seawater MeSH concentrations, identified their statistical predictors, and produced monthly fields of global marine MeSH emissions adding to DMS emissions. Implemented into a global chemistry-climate model, MeSH emissions increase the sulfate aerosol burden by 30 to 70% over the Southern Ocean and enhance the aerosol cooling effect while depleting atmospheric oxidants and increasing DMS lifetime and transport. Accounting for MeSH emissions reduces the radiative bias of current climate models in this climatically relevant region.

Rights

Copyright © 2024 the Authors, some rights reserved. Exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. POLAR-CHANGE 2023 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12758980), Blanes 2022 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12758703), and AMT-7 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12759178) can be downloaded online. Monthly maps of concentrations and sea-to-air fluxes of MeSH are available in Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12943019). The public version of the CAM-Chem software used in this work is available for download from https://www2.acom.ucar.edu/gcm/cam-chem. The CAM-Chem output data related to this article are available in Mendeley (https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/7wy65833v5/1)."

Original Publication Citation

Wohl, C., Villamayor, J., Galí, M., Mahajan, A. S., Fernández, R. P., Cuevas, C. A., Bossolasco, A., Li, Q., Kettle, A. J., Williams, T., Sarda-Esteve, R., Gros, V., Simó, R., & Saiz-Lopez, A. (2024). Marine emissions of methanethiol increase aerosol cooling in the Southern Ocean. Science Advances, 10(48), 1-9, Article eadq2465. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adq2465

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