Central Arctic snow chemical composition, 2013 - 2014

• Main Author: Peterson, Peter
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2017
• Subjects: Snow; Arctic; North Pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18739/a2m32n96b; https://arcticdata.io/catalog/#view/doi:10.18739/A2M32N96B

This data set consists of chemical analysis of snow melt water samples collected by scientists from the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory associated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Switchyard and North Pole Environmental Observatory. Snow composition impacts chemistry occurring in the overlying Arctic atmosphere, impacting processes including boundary layer ozone depletion events and mercury deposition, yet the chemical composition of snow in this region of the Arctic has not yet been studied in detail. This data set attempts to fill in this knowledge gap by providing chemical composition measurements of snow in the central Arctic. The file contains snow chemical composition data from 2013 and 2014 field campaigns. Specific sampling dates, locations, sample depth, and snow depth are given in the data file. The data set consists of 42 snow samples, all of which were analyzed for major ion concentrations using ion chromatography at the University of Michigan. The inorganic ions measured, and their corresponding detection limits were: sodium (Na+; 6 μM), potassium (K+; 1 μM), magnesium (Mg2+; 0.05 μM), calcium (Ca2+; 0.1 μM), chloride (Cl-; 0.7 μM), sulfate (SO42-; 0.6 μM), bromide (Br-; 0.02 μM), and nitrate (NO3-; 0.08 μM).