Atmospheric Chemistry and the Biosphere: General Discussion

Lucy Carpenter opened discussion of the paper by Christian George: Your previous work has emphasised the abiotic production of VOCs from surface ocean processes, mainly from photosensitized chemistry of surfactants. Does this work indicate that decay of microbial cells is the really dominant source of these VOC-producing surfactants and photosensitizers, and if so - does this really mean this is an abiotic process? Christian George responded: As shown in our paper, VOC emissions increased drastically when the microbial cells were dying. Moreover, the highest VOC production was observed for the cellular fraction of the biofilms, i.e. intracellular material and cellular debris.