Submicron film drop production by bubbles in seawater

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Abstract
The marine droplet aerosol, composed of the film and jet drops produced by breaking bubbles, is at the origin of most of the sea salt particles found in the atmosphere. For a long time, it was believed that the number of film drops produced per bubble burst increased continuously with increasing bubble diameter. Recently, however, Blanchard and Syzdek (1988) reported a peak in film drop production in the bubble size range of 2‐ to 2.5‐mm diameter, with much lower drop counts for larger bubbles. Experiments designed to investigate this peak over the bubble diameter range of 1.06–5.7 mm are reported. The results confirm the existence of a peak in the film drop count data at a bubble diameter of about 2.14 mm. The size distribution of the film drops accounting for the peak was estimated using a screen diffusion battery. Most of the drops were found to be of submicron dimensions and concentrated in the 0.05‐ to 0.3‐ μm‐diameter size range.