Frost flowers – one of the causes of the ozone depletion?

Xin Yang^1, Vilém Neděla^2, Jiří Runštuk^2, Gabriela Ondrušková^3^,4, Ján Krausko^3,4, Ľubica
Vetráková^3,4, and Dominik Heger^3,4

^1British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge, UK

^2Environmental Electron Microscopy Group, Institute of Scientific Instruments of the CAS, Brno,
Czech Republic

^3Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5/A8, 625 00 Brno,
Czech Republic

^4Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment (RECETOX), Masaryk University, Kamenice
5/A29,

625 00 Brno, Czech Republic


Frost flowers are highly saline ice structures that grow from a saturated water vapor layer on a
young sea ice and sporadically on frozen lakes.^1-4 An important factor must be fulfilled,
specifically, that the temperature of the air above the ice has to be at least 20 °C lower than the
temperature of water under the ice.^4 Depending on the original position of the brine covering the
ice, namely, if it was located on the ice surface or buried in-between the ice crystals in the vein
channels and pockets, the sublimation of the surrounding ice may increase the brine surface area
several times or even more than an order of magnitude. This could potentially accelerate the
heterogeneous reactions; one particularly important reaction is bromine liberation, which is
believed to be the direct source of bromine from the saline particles in polar regions.^3, 5 Frost
flowers broken to small fragments during ice sublimation were suspected to be the source of the
saline particles in the atmosphere. We prepared frost flowers and examined their gradual
sublimation on environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM).

The participation of the frost flowers in bromine explosion was disproved by our experiments.


1.            Bowman, J. S.; Larose, C.; Vogel, T. M.; Deming, J. W. Selective occurrence of
Rhizobiales in frost flowers on the surface of young sea ice near Barrow, Alaska and distribution
in the polar marine rare biosphere. Environmental Microbiology Reports 2013, 5 (4), 575-582.

2.            Bowman, J. S.; Berthiaume, C. T.; Armbrust, E. V.; Deming, J. W. The genetic
potential for key biogeochemical processes in Arctic frost flowers and young sea ice revealed by
metagenomic analysis. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 2014, 89 (2), 376-387.

3.            Kaleschke, L.; Richter, A.; Burrows, J.; Afe, O.; Heygster, G.; Notholt, J.; Rankin,
A. M.; Roscoe, H. K.; Hollwedel, J.; Wagner, T., et al. Frost flowers on sea ice as a source of sea
salt and their influence on tropospheric halogen chemistry. Geophys. Res. Lett. 2004, 31 (16), 4.

4.            Style, R. W.; Worster, M. G. Frost flower formation on sea ice and lake ice. Geophys.
Res. Lett. 2009, 36 (11).

5.            Roscoe, H. K.; Brooks, B.; Jackson, A. V.; Smith, M. H.; Walker, S. J.; Obbard, R.
W.; Wolff, E. W. Frost flowers in the laboratory: Growth, characteristics, aerosol, and the
underlying sea ice. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 2011, 116 (D12).