Airborne bacteria confirm the pristine nature of the Southern Ocean boundary layer

Significance

We found that the summer airborne bacterial community in the marine boundary layer over the Southern Ocean directly south of Australia is dominated by marine bacteria emitted in sea spray, originating primarily from the west in a zonal band at the latitude of collection. We found that airborne communities were more diverse to the north, and much less so toward Antarctica. These results imply that sea spray sources largely control the number concentrations of nuclei for liquid cloud droplets and limit ice nucleating particle concentrations to the low values expected in nascent sea spray. In the sampled region, the sources of summer cloud-active particles therefore are unlikely to have changed in direct response to perturbations in continental anthropogenic emissions.

Abstract

Microorganisms are ubiquitous and highly diverse in the atmosphere. Despite the potential impacts of airborne bacteria found in the lower atmosphere over the Southern Ocean (SO) on the ecology of Antarctica and on marine cloud phase, no previous region-wide assessment of bioaerosols over the SO has been reported. We conducted bacterial profiling of boundary layer shipboard aerosol samples obtained during an Austral summer research voyage, spanning 42.8 to 66.5°S. Contrary to findings over global subtropical regions and the Northern Hemisphere, where transport of microorganisms from continents often controls airborne communities, the great majority of the bacteria detected in our samples were marine, based on taxonomy, back trajectories, and source tracking analysis. Further, the beta diversity of airborne bacterial communities varied with latitude and temperature, but not with other meteorological variables. Limited meridional airborne transport restricts southward community dispersal, isolating Antarctica and inhibiting microorganism and nutrient deposition from lower latitudes to these same regions. A consequence and implication for this region’s marine boundary layer and the clouds that overtop it is that it is truly pristine, free from continental and anthropogenic influences, with the ocean as the dominant source controlling low-level concentrations of cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles.