Measurements of the ion concentrations and conductivity over the Arabian Sea during the ARMEX

TL;DR

This study measures ion concentrations and atmospheric conductivity over the Arabian Sea during monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons, revealing seasonal and diurnal variations and proposing mechanisms for ion generation.

Contribution

It provides detailed seasonal and diurnal ion data over the Arabian Sea and introduces a new hypothesis on ion generation via bubble-breaking during monsoon.

Findings

Higher conductivity during monsoon than pre-monsoon

Inverse relationship between small ions and monsoon season

Large ions generated by bubble-breaking during monsoon

Abstract

Measurements of the small-, intermediate-, and large-ion concentrations and the atmospheric electric conductivity of both polarities have been made over the Arabian Sea on four cruises of ORV Sagarkanya during the Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment (ARMEX)during the monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons of 2002 and 2003. Seasonally averaged values of the total as well as polar conductivity are much higher during the monsoon than pre-monsoon season. Surprisingly, however, the concentration of small ions are less and those of large and intermediate ions are more during the monsoon than pre-monsoon season. The diurnal variations observed during the pre-monsoon season show that the nighttime small ion concentrations are about an order of magnitude higher than their daytime values. On the contrary, the daytime concentrations of the intermediate and large ions are much higher than those of their nighttime values. No such diurnal variations in ion concentrations are observed in monsoon season. Also examined are the variations in ion concentrations of different categories with distance from the coastline in different seasons and the ion-concentration changes associated with the precipitation of various types that occurred over ORV Sagarkanya. It is sufficient to invoke the ion-aerosol attachment process to explain our pre-monsoon observations. However, the generation of highly charged large ions by the bubble-breaking process caused by the wave breaking due to strong southwesterly surface winds ten to twenty meter per second over the Arabian Sea is postulated to explain the monsoon season observations.