Reply to comment on 'Size distribution of sea-salt emissions as a function of relative humidity'

摘要

We appreciate the insightful comments provided by Lewis and Schwartz (2005). We became aware of their parameterization of sea-salt's size dependence on relative humidity (Lewis and Schwartz, 2004) only after our original manuscript was in press and agree that Eq. (4) of Lewis and Schwartz (2005) is an improvement over the expression for the size-correction factor (C_0, defined as the ratio of sea-salt particle diameter at formation to that at ambient relative humidity, RH) in Zhang et al. (2005) due to its physical basis rather than derivation from a polynomial fit to laboratory data. Although both parameterizations are useful for general atmospheric modeling applications, the Lewis and Schwartz parameterization can be applied not only to typical ocean environments, but also to the few locations where salinity departs significantly from 35 per thousand, and is more accurate at times and locations where the ambient RH exceeds 98%.