Trace elements and individual particle analysis of atmospheric aerosols from the Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

Non-sea-salt sulfate showed a clear seasonal pattern, with minimum during wintertime. For summer and wintertime coarse particles, only two factors were significant, with the first having high loadings for Na, Mg, Cl, S, Sr, K, Ca, and the coarse particle mass concentration (representing sea-salt aerosol). The second factor had high loadings for Al, Si, Fe,Ti, and Ca (soil dust aerosol). For the fine mode particles three factors were differentiated, and they represented sea-salt aerosol, soil dust and sulfates. The sea-salt source profile agreed with the average sea-water elemental composition to within 20% for the elements Na, Mg, S, Cl, K, Ca and Br. The source apportionment for the coarse particle mass concentration (CPM) revealed that 86 to 89% of the CPM is accounted for by the sea-salt aerosol component, and 3.2 to 6.8% by soil dust and that 7.6 to 8.1% of the CPM could not be apportioned. For the fine particle mass concentration (FPM), sea-salt aerosol accounted for 60%, sulfates for 24 to 31%, soil dust for only 0.5 to 1.3%. -from Authors