Abstract. Carbonyl sulfide (OCS), the most abundant sulfur gas in
the Earth's atmosphere, is a greenhouse gas, a precursor to stratospheric
sulfate aerosol, and a proxy for terrestrial CO2 uptake. Estimates of
important OCS sources and sinks still have significant uncertainties and the
global budget is not considered closed. One particularly uncertain source
term, the OCS production during the atmospheric oxidation of dimethyl
sulfide (DMS) emitted by the oceans, is addressed by a series of experiments
in the atmospheric simulation chamber SAPHIR in conditions comparable to the
remote marine atmosphere. DMS oxidation was initiated with OH and/or Cl
radicals and DMS, OCS, and several oxidation products and intermediates were
measured, including hydroperoxymethyl thioformate (HPMTF), which was recently
found to play a key role in DMS oxidation in the marine atmosphere. One
important finding is that the onset of HPMTF and OCS formation occurred
faster than expected from the current chemical mechanisms. In agreement with
other recent studies, OCS yields between 9 % and 12 % were observed in our
experiments. Such yields are substantially higher than the 0.7 % yield
measured in laboratory experiments in the 1990s, which is generally used to
estimate the indirect OCS source from DMS in global budget estimates.
However, we do not expect the higher yields found in our experiments to
directly translate into a substantially higher OCS source from DMS oxidation
in the real atmosphere, where conditions are highly variable, and, as pointed
out in recent work, heterogeneous HPMTF loss is expected to effectively
limit OCS production via this pathway. Together with other experimental
studies, our results will be helpful to further elucidate the DMS oxidation
chemical mechanism and in particular the paths leading to OCS formation.