In the air, on land and sea

The oceans cover more than 70 percent, or about 140 million square miles, of Earth's surface. Interactions between the ocean and atmosphere over this immense region play a critical role in shaping our climate. Currently, we have only a fragmentary understanding of exchanges of energy across the air-sea interface, the fate of different materials that are injected into the atmosphere or deposited in the ocean, and the effect of these processes on larger biogeochemical systems. Equally important, we lack information about how man's activities change the way these systems function.

The Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) is a new research initiative that currently involves more than 250 scientists from twenty-two countries. SOLAS represents the first comprehensive attempt to coordinate the work of marine and atmospheric scientists conducting interdisciplinary investigations of these air-sea interactions.

Research Professor William Keene is helping move the project forward, serving on several organizing groups drafting national and international implementation plans that will guide SOLAS through the next decade. “SOLAS is important because it creates a structure that fosters collaboration not only among scientists from different disciplines, but also among the funding agencies that have traditionally supported only uni-disciplinary research in this field,” says Keene.

Keene is well suited for the project, having worked at the interface of ocean and atmosphere for most of his career. An atmospheric chemist, he collaborates with ad hoc groups of specialists from U.Va. and other institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

An area of particular interest for Keene involves compounds containing halogens (chlorine, bromine, and iodine) that are emitted from the ocean. Scientists have plenty of documentation on the role of pollution-derived halogens in generating the stratospheric ozone hole, but the consequences of marine-derived halogens are more uncertain.

Keene and his colleagues are investigating the influences of these highly reactive compounds on ozone, sulfur, and other constituents of marine air that can affect climate.

Last summer, Keene participated in the largest atmospheric chemistry experiment ever conducted. With support from the National Science Foundation, his group collaborated with researchers from NOAA, NASA, and other institutions to quantify the export of pollutant gases and aerosols from North America to the Atlantic Ocean, to resolve their chemical interactions with marine-derived compounds, and to assess associated influences on air quality and climate.

Simply put, observers have long been struck that air over coastal New England and the Gulf of Maine during summer is often as polluted as that over Los Angeles on a bad day. When air flows from the southwest, this region is the tailpipe for pollutants emitted from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Keene's research plays a role in helping us gain a fundamental understanding of this problem so that we have the information needed to find a solution.

This article originally appeared in Explorations, Winter 2005.