In this study we investigate the occurrence of primary biological aerosol particles (PBAP) over all sectors of the Southern Ocean (SO) based on a 90-day dataset collected during the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE) in austral summer 2016-2017. Super-micrometer PBAP (1 to 16 µm diameter) were measured by a wide band integrated bioaerosol sensor (WIBS-4). Low (3σ) and high (9σ) fluorescence thresholds are used to obtain statistics on fluorescent and hyper-fluorescent PBAP, respectively. Our focus is on data obtained over the pristine ocean, i.e. more than 200 km away from land. The results indicate that (hyper-)fluorescent PBAP are correlated to atmospheric variables associated with sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles (wind speed, total super-micrometer aerosol number concentration, chloride and sodium concentrations). This suggests that a main source of PBAP over the SO is SSA. The median fraction of fluorescent and hyper-fluorescent PBAP to super-micrometer SSA is 1.6% and 0.13%, respectively. We demonstrate that the fraction of (hyper-)fluorescent PBAP to total super-micrometer particles positively correlates with concentrations of bacteria and several taxa of phytoplankton measured in seawater, indicating that marine biota concentrations modulate the PBAP source flux. We investigate the fluorescent properties of (hyper-)fluorescent PBAP for several events that occurred near land masses. We find that the fluorescence signal characteristics of particles near land is much more variable than over the pristine ocean. We conclude that the source and concentration of fluorescent PBAP over the open ocean is similar across all sectors of the SO.

A data set of concurrent measurements of sea spray aerosol concentration, wind speed, sea state, and air and water temperature was acquired across all sectors of the Southern Ocean during the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (Austral summer 2016/2017). In addition to the established dependence on wind speed, our observations demonstrate that sea spray aerosol concentrations depend on sea state and the stability of the marine boundary layer. Besides driving sea spray emissions, wind speed and sea state strongly influence the deposition onto the ocean surface and thus aerosol lifetime even for smaller particles. Stable atmospheric conditions allow a typical lifetime of up to 4 days, while tropospheric air entrainment in unstable conditions reduces the residence time of sea spray aerosol in the marine boundary layer to less than 2 days.