Abstract. Primary marine aerosols are an important component of the climate system, especially in the remote marine environment. With diminishing sea-ice cover, better understanding of the role of sea spray aerosol on climate in the polar regions is required. As for Arctic Ocean water, laboratory experiments with NaCl water confirm that a few degrees change in the water temperature (T_w) gives a large change in the number of primary particles. Small particles with a dry diameter between 0.01 μm and 0.25 μm dominate the aerosol number density, but their relative dominance decreases with increasing water temperature from 0 °C where they represent 85–90% of the total aerosol number to 10 °C, where they represent 60–70% of the total aerosol number. This effect is most likely related to a change in physical properties and not to modification of sea water chemistry. A change of salinity between 15 g kg⁻¹ and 35 g kg⁻¹ did not influence the shape of a particle number size distribution. Although the magnitude of the size distribution for a water temperature change between 0 °C and 16 °C changed, the shape did not. An experiment where succinic acid was added to a NaCl water solution showed, that the number concentration of particles with 0.010 μm < D_p < 4.5 μm decreased on average by 10% when the succinic acid concentration in NaCl water at a water temperature of 0 °C was increased from 0 μmol L⁻¹ to 94 μmol L⁻¹. A shift to larger sizes in the particle number size distribution is observed from pure NaCl water to Arctic Ocean water. This is likely a consequence of organics and different inorganic salts present in Arctic Ocean water in addition to the NaCl.