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Understanding interfacial phenomena associated with liquid water can be aided by a molecular model that envisions the pure bulk liquid as a mixture of flickering clusters and more or less monomeric water. Sea water solutes alter the local water structure into at least two structurally different types of hydration atmospheres, coulombic hydration surrounding ions and polar solutes and hydrophobic hydration enveloping nonpolar solutes and solute segments. The water structure (vicinal water) of the liquid boundary layer at the air-sea interface is theorized to resemble the hydrophobic hydration, and it may preferentially exclude ionic species and thereby give rise to the Na-K fractionation observed in nature.
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R. A. Horne (1972) studied this question.
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