Southern Ocean Aerosol Composition Measurements from RV Investigator Voyage

Real-time aerosol chemistry measurements were collected using a Time-of-Flight Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ToF-ACSM) during the RV Investigator voyage IN2024_V01. The data includes concentrations of nitrate, ammonium, sulfate, organics, chloride, and sea salt aerosols. The voyage was conducted by the Australian Ocean Data Network from January 2 to March 5, 2024, focusing on the Southern Ocean.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in nitrate, sulfate, and organic aerosol concentrations to study marine aerosol sources.
• Correlate sea salt aerosol measurements with wind speed and sea state data from the voyage to validate emission models.
• Use high-resolution ammonium and chloride data to investigate atmospheric neutralization processes over the Southern Ocean.
• Integrate real-time aerosol speciation data with cloud condensation nuclei counts to model aerosol-cloud-climate interactions.

Strengths

• Data provides high-resolution, real-time measurements of multiple aerosol species.
• Measurements cover a specific 2-month voyage from January to March 2024.
• Focuses on the critical and data-sparse Southern Ocean region.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to a single 2-month voyage.
• Spatial coverage is restricted to the ship track of the RV Investigator.
• Sample data and row counts are unavailable to assess dataset volume.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Measured using a Time-of-Flight Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ToF-ACSM) aboard the RV Investigator.

Time Range

January 2 to March 5, 2024 (AEST)

Freshness

Data is from early 2024, with metadata last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Southern Ocean, voyage track from Hobart to Fremantle.