Validation of satellite-based estimates of whitecap coverage: Approaches and initial results

Sea salt aerosols (SSAs) are actively produced within the oceanic whitecaps by the evaporation of the sea spray droplets formed when whitecap bubbles burst. Large discrepancies still exist in the estimates of the emissions and concentrations of SSAs. As the SSAs establish the baseline of a background marine atmosphere, uncertainty in predicting their emission introduces large uncertainty in the aerosol and atmospheric chemistry modules of both global circulation (GC) and chemical transport (CT) models. While the parameterizations for SSA emissions currently used in GC and CT models produce acceptable results, the need to update them with better constrained parameterizations is continuously increasing as the performance of the GC and CT models improve.

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