A quantitative investigation of airborne sea salt over Macquarie Island

Abstract

Through study of rainwater collections made at Macquarie Island, during the 1985-86 austral summer, it was possible to compare previous theoretical predictions of sea-salt scavenging in precipitation with actual observations. Some earlier rainwater collections are found to have grosslyoverestimated the initial salt budget. It is shown that the earlier theoretical investigation adequately accounts for the salt budget and that sea-spray droplets play little part in salt scavenging by precipitation over most parts of the island,