A Seasonal Record of Total Particulate Matter Embedded in Greenland Surface Snow

Abstract

<jats:p>Atmospheric aerosols are often investigated in order to gain insight into their effects on the global radiative heat budget, optical properties of the atmosphere, and their effects on human health. Characterizing the seasonal behavior of these aerosols is fundamental in understanding their climatological and air quality impacts. As part of a larger program to study the present and recent history of chemical species transported to Greenland, we analyzed a seasonal cycle of total aerosol matter scavenged from the air by surface snow.</jats:p><jats:p>During a “winter-over” experiment in Summit, Greenland, extending from June 1997 through March 1998, kilogram quantities of surface snow were collected, melted, and filtered onto high-purity quartz fiber filters in the field. Upon the receipt of these filters at NIST, the total particulate matter was removed from the filters and transferred to boron substrates with protocols involving resuspension, centrifugation, and filtration.’ Previous techniques that quantified multi-element particles used several different substrates.</jats:p>

Long range transport of biomass aerosol to Greenland: Multi-spectroscopic investigation of particles deposited in the snow

“…7 The solution has been to develop scrupulous blank treatments for all reagents, apparatus, and sampling media for the entire measurement process, from melting and filtration of the snow, to closed tube combustion of the extracted particulate-C for the preparation of AMS targets. 4,8 One of the fruits of these efforts has been the reduction of the combustion blank, central to all 14 C measurement, to 0.16±0.06 µg C, well below the "dilution AMS" quantification limit of 0.9 µg C. Attention to the physics and chemistry of the blank proved also extremely fruitful in minimizing the "field blank" problem. This is illustrated in the "Thermal optical analysis" section, where a thermal discriminator, based on the comparative volatility spectra of the particulate-C samples and the filter blank-C, controls the filter blank to about 0.1 µg C.…”

The remarkable metrological history of radiocarbon dating [II]

“… First evidence of a seasonal pattern in biomass carbon aerosol in surface snow in central Greenland [ 55 , 56 ]. Fundamental differences were found between the biomass carbon peaks in summer (sample-4 [WO4]), and spring (sample-8 [WO8]) via “multi-spectroscopic” macro- and micro-chemical analysis.…”