Research aims of Seasaw Cruise:

Sea spray aerosol particles, generated primarily by the action of the wind on the ocean surface, make a major contribution to the atmospheric aerosol over the global oceans. Their ability to participate in heterogeneous atmospheric chemical processes and especially their activity as cloud condensation nuclei make them very important in global climate processes. Similarly, the air-sea fluxes of trace gases, are influenced by wind speed and whitecap processes.

The flux of carbon dioxide between atmosphere and ocean is a controlling factor on the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere, but there are large uncertainties in the size of the flux as a function of wind speed; and the effects of factors such as wave breaking, surfactants, etc are almost entirely unknown.

This project will measure these fluxes by direct eddy-covariance methods and other techniques in order to determine their dependence upon environmental factors.