Abstract
Terrestrially produced participate organic matter can be transported relatively fast in the atmosphere, long distances over the ocean. It has been hypothesized that this atmospheric transport may be an important way of quickly introducing continentally-derived organic material to the surface waters of the open ocean1–11. After rapid transport through the water column to the sediment surface12, these terrestrial organic substances could account for an important fraction of the organic carbon found in the sedimentary record13. The atmospheric fluxes of these organic substances are large enough to have a major potential impact on the inventory of terrestrially derived lipid material, originating from vascular plant waxes, found in deep-sea sediments13. We present here the first use of organic compound biological source marker information in conjunction with long-range meteorological trajectory analysis to elucidate specific terrestrial source regions and to determine the transport pathways of organic material through the atmosphere to remote marine locations.
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Gagosian, R., Peltzer, E. & Merrill, J. Long-range transport of terrestrially derived lipids in aerosols from the south Pacific. Nature 325, 800–803 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/325800a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/325800a0
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