Correspondence

• Main Authors: Erika Von Schneidemesser, James J. Schauer, Martin M. Shafer, Michael H. Bergin, Environmental Chemistry
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: photochemistry; air pollution; Greenland; Arctic; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.360.8424; http://www.polarresearch.net/index.php/polar/article/download/11597/pdf_1/

Organic molecular marker compounds are widely used to identify emissions from anthropogenic and biogenic air pollution sources in atmospheric samples and in deposition. Specific organic compounds have been detected in polar regions, but their fate after deposition to snow is poorly characterized. Within this context, a series of exposure experiments were carried out to observe the post-depositional processing of organic compounds under real-world conditions in snow on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet, at the Summit research station. Snow was prepared from water spiked with isotopically labelled organic compounds, representative of typical molecular marker compounds emitted from anthropogenic activities. Reaction rate constants and reaction order were determined based on a decrease in concentration to a stable, non-zero, threshold concentration. Fluoranthene-d10, docosane-d46, hexadecanoic acid-d31, docosanoic acid-d43 and azelaic acid-d14 were estimated to have first order loss rates within surface snow with reaction rate constants of