Kim Prather

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Background: Glyoxal has been implicated as a significant contributor to the formation of secondary organic aerosols, which play a key role in our ability to estimate the impact of aerosols on climate. Elevated concentrations of glyoxal over remote ocean waters suggests that there is an additional source, distinct from urban and forest environments,...

Background: Glyoxal has been implicated as a significant contributor to the formation of secondary organic aerosols, which play a key role in our ability to estimate the impact of aerosols on climate. Elevated concentrations of glyoxal over open ocean waters suggest that there exists an additional source, different from urban and forest environment...

Viscosity, or the “thickness,” of aerosols plays a key role in atmospheric processes like ice formation, water absorption, and heterogeneous kinetics. However, the viscosity of sea spray aerosols (SSA) has not been widely studied. This research explored the relationship between particle size and viscosity of authentic SSA particles through particle...

Variable wind speeds over the ocean can have a significant impact on the formation mechanism and physical-chemical properties of sea spray aerosols (SSA), which in turn influence their climate-relevant impacts. Herein, for the first time, we investigate the effects of wind speed on size-dependent morphology and composition of individual nascent SSA...

The use of online mass spectrometry for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has proven to be a powerful technique, allowing for real-time analysis of many chemical and biochemical processes. Unfortunately, online mass spectrometry has had limited application due to high instrument costs and limited availability. Here, we detail the design,...

If some countries lead by example, standards may increasingly become normalized

Increasing recognition of the significant contributions secondary organic aerosols can make in marine environments has led to an increase in research focused on understanding the reactions controlling their formation. Most marine laboratory studies to date have focused on the oxidation of individual volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particularly d...

An April–May 2020 bloom of the red tide microalga Lingulodinium polyedra developed to an unprecedented size, extending from northern Baja California to the Santa Barbara Channel. The L. polyedra strain is native to coastal California and is known to produce low levels of a toxic di-sulfated polyether named yessotoxin (YTX). In order to assess the e...

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) are rare atmospheric aerosols that initiate primary ice formation, but accurately simulating their concentrations and variability in large-scale climate models remains a challenge. Doing so requires both simulating major particle sources and parameterizing their ice nucleation (IN) efficiency. Validating and improvin...

Oceans emit ice-nucleating particles (INPs) which freeze supercooled cloud droplets, modifying clouds. We added dead biomass of three phytoplankton to seawater. Each time, this stimulated INP production in the water and INP emissions in sea spray.

Sea spray aerosol (SSA) ejected through bursting bubbles at the ocean surface is a complex mixture of salts and organic species. Submicrometer SSA particles have long atmospheric lifetimes and play a critical role in the climate system. Composition impacts their ability to form marine clouds, yet their cloud-forming potential is difficult to study...

Organic matter accumulates at the ocean surface. Herein, we provide the first quantitative assessment of the enrichment of dissolved saccharides in persistent whitecap foam and compare this enrichment to the sea surface microlayer (SSML) during a 9 day mesocosm experiment involving a phytoplankton bloom generated in a Marine Aerosol Reference Tank...

Roughly half of the human population lives near the coast, and coastal water pollution (CWP) is widespread. Coastal waters along Tijuana, Mexico, and Imperial Beach (IB), USA, are frequently polluted by millions of gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater runoff. Entering coastal waters causes over 100 million global annual illnesses, but CWP has...

Humic‐like substances (HULIS) are present in every environmental reservoir, including the ocean and the atmosphere. Ocean‐derived HULIS can be transferred to the atmosphere in the form of sea spray aerosols (SSA). Little information exists on the factors controlling this transfer process or how HULIS alter SSA physicochemical properties, cloud‐form...

Sea spray aerosol (SSA) ejected through bursting bubbles at the ocean surface are complex mixtures of salts and organic species. Composition affects their ability to form marine clouds which cover nearly three-quarters of the Earth and play a critical role in the climate system. Submicron SSA particles have long lifetimes in the atmosphere and impa...

The organic composition of coastal sea spray aerosol is important for both atmospheric chemistry and public health but remains poorly characterized. Coastal waters contain an organic material derived from both anthropogenic processes, such as wastewater discharge, and biological processes, including biological blooms. Here, we probe the chemical co...

The effects of atmospheric aging on single-particle nascent sea spray aerosol (nSSA) physicochemical properties, such as morphology, composition, phase state, and water uptake, are important to understanding their impacts on the Earth’s climate. The present study investigates these properties by focusing on the aged SSA (size range of 0.1–0.6 μm) a...

Mineral dust and sea spray aerosol represent important sources of ice-nucleating particles (INPs), the minor fraction of aerosol particles able to trigger cloud ice crystal formation and, consequently, influence multiple climate-relevant cloud properties including lifetime, radiative properties and precipitation initiation efficiency. Mineral dust...

Sea spray is a significant global aerosol source with impacts on marine cloud formation and climate. The physical properties and atmospheric fate of the sea spray aerosol (SSA) depend on its chemical composition, but the current understanding of the sources and composition of the marine aerosol or SSA remains limited particularly for the smallest a...

The question of whether SARS‐CoV‐2 is mainly transmitted by droplets or aerosols has been highly controversial. We sought to explain this controversy through a historical analysis of transmission research in other diseases. For most of human history, the dominant paradigm was that many diseases were carried by the air, often over long distances and...

To elucidate the seawater biological and physicochemical factors driving differences in organic composition between supermicron and submicron sea spray aerosol (SSAsuper and SSAsub), carbon isotopic composition (δ13C) measurements were performed on size-segregated, nascent SSA collected during a phytoplankton bloom mesocosm experiment. The δ13C mea...

The discovery of atmospheric micro(nano)plastic transport and ocean–atmosphere exchange points to a highly complex marine plastic cycle, with negative implications for human and ecosystem health. Yet, observations are currently limited. In this Perspective, we quantify the processes and fluxes of the marine-atmospheric micro(nano)plastic cycle, wit...

Ice nucleating particles (INPs) impact cloud properties and precipitation processes through their ability to trigger cloud glaciation. Dust and bioparticles are two important sources of INPs that have markedly different atmospheric loadings and ice nucleating efficiencies. In-situ identification of the sources of INPs in clouds has been accomplishe...

Ocean waves transfer sea spray aerosol (SSA) to the atmosphere, and these SSA particles can be enriched in organic matter relative to salts compared to seawater ratios. A fundamental understanding of the factors controlling the transfer of biogenic organic matter from the ocean to the atmosphere remains elusive. Field studies that focus on understa...

Mineral dust and sea spray aerosol represent important sources of ice nucleating particles (INPs), the minor fraction of aerosol particles able to trigger cloud ice crystal formation and, consequently, influence multiple climate-relevant cloud properties including lifetime, reflectivity, and precipitation efficiency. Mineral dust is considered the...

The oxidation of dimethyl sulfide (DMS; CH3SCH3), emitted from the surface ocean, contributes to the formation of Aitken mode particles and their growth to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) sizes in remote marine environments. It is not clear whether other less commonly measured marine-derived, sulfur-containing gases share similar dynamics to DMS an...

A consensus statement from physicians and scientists with a range of expertise in the areas of respiratory infection and aerosols, to clarify the discussion surrounding a recent preprint (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.08.22268944v1) describing the aerosol dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) which generated cont...

Plain Language Summary Research has shown that particulates can be transferred from the ocean into sea spray aerosol (SSA) when bubbles burst at the ocean surface. This transfer is important because incorporation of seawater particulates into SSA can impact its ability to seed water and ice clouds. During the Sea Spray Chemistry and Particulate Evo...

The SeaSCAPE campaign replicated the marine atmosphere in the laboratory to investigate the links between biological activity in the ocean and the properties of primary sea spray aerosols, volatile organic compounds, and secondary marine aerosols.

Algal biomass production is an emerging renewable source of fuels, nutrients, manufacturing materials, and pharmaceuticals. Industrial-scale production is predominantly performed in open raceway ponds that are inexpensive to build, operate, and maintain compared to closed bioreactors. However, these open pond systems suffer from increased opportuni...

Anthropogenic imprints have become a fundamental part of most ecosystems. Our chemical footprint is often detected using targeted approaches, whereas xenobiotics are embedded within the large pool of dissolved metabolites, altered by biotic and abiotic mechanisms. Thus, it is necessary to simultaneously study anthropogenic signals entwined with the...

The impact of sea spray aerosols (SSAs) on Earth’s climate remains uncertain in part due to size-dependent particle-to-particle variability in SSA physicochemical properties such as morphology, composition, phase state, and water uptake that can be further modulated by the environment relative humidity (RH). The current study investigates these pro...

Ice nucleating particles (INPs) are a rare subset of particles that can have an outsized impact relative to their prevalence. To simulate INP variability, models require parameterizations for the most important sources of INPs. Most parameterizations in the literature were developed from laboratory experiments that used proxies for ambient particle...

Significance Wide adoption of algae cultivation to produce environmentally sustainable biofuels and fine chemicals is currently hampered by large losses (10 to 30%) incurred by grazer infections. We show the usage of real-time chemical ionization mass spectrometry to rapidly identify gaseous indicators of grazer infections in cyanobacteria cultures...

Mechanisms of airborne transmission The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted controversies and unknowns about how respiratory pathogens spread between hosts. Traditionally, it was thought that respiratory pathogens spread between people through large droplets produced in coughs and through contact with contaminated surfaces (fomites). However, several...

The oxidation of dimethyl sulfide (DMS; CH3SCH3), emitted from the surface ocean, contributes to the formation of Aitken mode particles and their growth to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) sizes in remote marine environments. It is not clear whether other, less commonly measured marine-derived, sulfur-containing gases share similar dynamics to DMS a...

Marine aerosols strongly influence climate through their interactions with solar radiation and clouds. However, significant questions remain regarding the influences of biological activity and seawater chemistry on the flux, chemical composition, and climate-relevant properties of marine aerosols and gases. Wave channels, a traditional tool of phys...

Marine aerosols strongly influence climate through their interactions with solar radiation and clouds. However, significant questions remain regarding the influences of biological activity and seawater chemistry on the flux, chemical composition, and climate-relevant properties of marine aerosols and gases. Wave channels, a traditional tool of phys...

Molecular networking connects mass spectra of molecules based on the similarity of their fragmentation patterns. However, during ionization, molecules commonly form multiple ion species with different fragmentation behavior. As a result, the fragmentation spectra of these ion species often remain unconnected in tandem mass spectrometry-based molecu...

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) represent a rare subset of aerosol particles that initiate cloud droplet freezing at temperatures above the homogenous freezing point of water (-38 ∘C). Considering that the ocean covers 71 % of the Earth's surface and represents a large potential source of INPs, it is imperative that the identities, properties and r...

Each year, over one hundred million people become ill and tens of thousands die from exposure to viruses and bacteria from sewage transported to the ocean by rivers, estuaries, stormwater, and other coastal discharges. Water activities and seafood consumption have been emphasized as the major exposure pathways to coastal water pollution. In contras...

Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles have recently been shown to undergo heterogeneous reactions with HNO3 in the atmosphere. Here, we integrate theory and experiment to further investigate how the most abundant sea salt cations, Na⁺, Mg²⁺, and Ca²⁺, impact HNO3 reactions with LPS-containing SSA particles. Aerosol reaction...

Looking further than COVID-19, some of the key messages: 1. We from now on should include the risk of indoor respiratory infections in our design of buildings and its ventilation. 2. Treat the air quality in a similar way as we are used to for water and food quality. 3. ‘Visualize’ the air quality by displaying monitoring values (e.g. CO2 concentra...

Significance Microplastic particles and fibers generated from the breakdown of mismanaged waste are now so prevalent that they cycle through the earth in a manner akin to global biogeochemical cycles. In modeling the atmospheric limb of the plastic cycle, we show that most atmospheric plastics are derived from the legacy production of plastics from...

Biological aerosols, typically identified through their fluorescence properties, strongly influence clouds and climate. Sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles are a major source of biological aerosols, but detection in the atmosphere is challenging due to potential interference from other sources. Here, the fluorescence signature of isolated SSA, produc...

Multi-layered mitigations can substantially reduce the risk of transmission within schools and into households. We summarise a set of recommendations that are in line with guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and practised in many countries to reduce the risk of transmission in schools and mitigate the impact of C...

On 22nd February, the UK government announced schools in England would fully reopen on the 8th March 2021. While returning to school as soon as possible is imperative for the education, social development, and mental and physical welfare of children, not enough has been done to make schools safer for students and staff. Multi-layered mitigations ca...

With oceans covering 71% of the Earth's surface, sea spray aerosol (SSA) particles play an important role in the global radiative budget by acting as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles (INPs). By acting as INPs, SSA particles affect the structure and properties of mixed‐phase clouds by inducing freezing at warmer temperatures th...

We examine airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 potential using a source-to-dose framework beginning with generation of virus-containing droplets and aerosols and ending with virus deposition in the respiratory tract of susceptible individuals. By addressing four critical questions, we identify both gaps in addressing four critical questions with an...

Significance Sea spray aerosol, produced through breaking waves, is one of the largest sources of environmental particles. Once in the atmosphere, sea spray aerosol influences cloud formation, serves as microenvironments for multiphase atmospheric chemical reactions, and impacts human health. All of these impacts are affected by aerosol acidity. He...

Ice nucleating particles (INPs) are a rare subset of aerosol particles that initiate cloud droplet freezing at temperatures above the homogenous freezing point of water (−38 °C). Considering that the ocean covers 70 % of the earth's surface and represent a large potential source of INPs, it is imperative that the uncertainties in the identities and...

Urbanization along coastlines alters marine ecosystems including contributing molecules of anthropogenic origin to the coastal dissolved organic matter (DOM) pool. A broad assessment of the nature and extent of anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems is urgently needed to inform regulatory guidelines and ecosystem management. Recently, non-targ...

Oceans are, generally, relatively weak sources of ice nucleating particles (INPs). Thus, dust transported from terrestrial regions can dominate atmospheric INP concentrations even in remote marine regions. Studies of ocean‐emitted INPs have focused upon sea spray aerosols containing biogenic species. Even though large concentrations of dust are tra...

Visionary environmental chemist

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) are efficiently removed from clouds through precipitation, a convenience of nature for the study of these very rare particles that influence multiple climate-relevant cloud properties including ice crystal concentrations, size distributions and phase-partitioning processes. INPs suspended in precipitation can be used...

Marine aerosols play a critical role in impacting our climate by seeding clouds over the oceans. Despite decades of research, key questions remain regarding how ocean biological activity changes the composition and cloud-forming ability of marine aerosols. This uncertainty largely stems from an inability to independently determine the cloud-forming...

ConspectusOcean-atmosphere interactions control the composition of the atmosphere, hydrological cycle, and temperature of our planet and affect human and ecosystem health. Our understanding of the impact of ocean emissions on atmospheric chemistry and climate is limited relative to terrestrial systems, despite the fact that oceans cover the majorit...