Water soluble organic constituents in Arctic aerosols and snow pack

Eight water‐soluble organic anions were measured in 70 aerosol samples and 10 snow samples at Barrow, Alaska in March–April, 1989. The ranking of the ions in aerosols according to total (coarse+fine aerosol) median concentrations was acetate (44 ng m −3 ), oxalate (27), benzoate (23), formate (22), propionate (6), methanesulfonate (5), lactate (4), and pyruvate (4). When added up, the median organic anion mass was 156 ng m −3 . The organic anions/nssSO 4 = mass ratio had a median of 0.18 and 0.07 in the coarse (>1 μm) and fine (<1 μm) size fractions, respectively, but can be very high on occasions. On average, the organic anions made up more than 10% of the water‐soluble aerosol mass. A similar ranking in concentration was also found for the organic ions in the snow pack samples. The organic anion/nssSO 4 = mass ratio in these samples was >0.5, substantially higher than in aerosols.