Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-30-2017
Publication Title
Frontiers in Marine Science
Keywords
sea surface microlayer, air-sea exchange, neuston, aerosols, surface films, gas exchange, review
ISSN
2296-7745
Volume
4
Issue/No.
Article 165
First Page
1
Last Page
14
Abstract
Despite the huge extent of the ocean's surface, until now relatively little attention has been paid to the sea surface microlayer (SML) as the ultimate interface where heat, momentum and mass exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere takes place. Via the SML, large-scale environmental changes in the ocean such as warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and eutrophication potentially influence cloud formation, precipitation, and the global radiation balance. Due to the deep connectivity between biological, chemical, and physical processes, studies of the SML may reveal multiple sensitivities to global and regional changes. Understanding the processes at the ocean's surface, in particular involving the SML as an important and determinant interface, could therefore provide an essential contribution to the reduction of uncertainties regarding ocean-climate feedbacks. This review identifies gaps in our current knowledge of the SML and highlights a need to develop a holistic and mechanistic understanding of the diverse biological, chemical, and physical processes occurring at the ocean-atmosphere interface. We advocate the development of strong interdisciplinary expertise and collaboration in order to bridge between ocean and atmospheric sciences. Although this will pose significant methodological challenges, such an initiative would represent a new role model for interdisciplinary research in Earth System sciences.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
NSUWorks Citation
Anja Engel, Hermann W. Bange, Michael Cunliffe, Susannah M. Burrows, Gernot Friedrichs, Luisa Galgani, Hartmut Herrmann, Norbert Hertkorn, Martin Johnson, Peter S. Liss, Patrick K. Quinn, Markus Schartau, Alexander Soloviev, Christian Stolle, Robert C. Upstill-Goddard, Manuela van Pinxteren, and Birthe Zäncker. 2017. The Ocean's Vital Skin: Toward an Integrated Understanding of the Sea Surface Microlayer .Frontiers in Marine Science , (Article 165) : 1 -14. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/1119.
ORCID ID
0000-0001-6519-1547
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00165
COinS
Comments
© 2017 Engel, Bange, Cunliffe, Burrows, Friedrichs, Galgani, Herrmann, Hertkorn, Johnson, Liss, Quinn, Schartau, Soloviev, Stolle, Upstill-Goddard, van Pinxteren and Zäncker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.