Direct injection liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry for determination of primary and secondary terrestrial and marine biomarkers in ice cores ...

• Main Authors: King, Amy, Giorio, Chiara, Wolff, Eric, Thomas, Elizabeth, Roverso, Marco, Schwikowski, Margit, Tapparo, Andrea, Bogialli, Sara, Kalberer, Markus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society (ACS) 2019
• Subjects: Biomarkers; Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; Environmental Monitoring; Ice; Limit of Detection; Mass Spectrometry; Oceans and Seas; ice core
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.38166; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/290987

Many atmospheric organic compounds are long-lived enough to be transported from their sources to polar regions and high mountain environments where they can be trapped in ice archives. While inorganic components in ice archives have been studied extensively to identify past climate changes, organic compounds have rarely been used to assess paleo-environmental changes, mainly due to the lack of suitable analytical methods. This study presents a new method of direct injection HPLC-MS analysis, without the need of pre-concentrating the melted ice, for the determination of a series of novel biomarkers in ice-core samples indicative of primary and secondary terrestrial and marine organic aerosol sources. Eliminating a preconcentration step reduces contamination potential and decreases the required sample volume thus allowing a higher time resolution in the archives. The method is characterised by limits of detections (LODs) in the range of 0.01-15 ppb, depending on the analyte, and accuracy evaluated through an ...