Abstract

With an elaborate accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) technique radiocarbon measurements have been performed with aerosol carbon filtered from high alpine snow samples gathered consecutively at the high-altitude research station Sonnblick (3106 m, Eastern Alps, Austria) during a snow storm in April 1997. The concentration of the water-insoluble carbonaceous material in the molten snow was on the average 310 μg C/L and the total sample amounts for analysis were in the range of 35 μg to 60 μg C. Using a special background correction procedure tested on similar amounts of an urban particulate standard sample the accuracy of the corrected and normalized 14C/12C isotopic ratios of the snow aerosol samples was in the order of 4% to 14% of the measured ratios. The water-insoluble carbonaceous material of five samples from Mt. Sonnblick exhibited a weighted mean of 74 pMC (percent Modern Carbon) with a range of 64 pMC to 88 pMC. Thus, it appears that about 64% of non-soluble carbon in high alpine snow from Sonnblick was of biogenic origin. The temporal variations of the 14C/12C isotopic ratios of the snow aerosol samples were statistically significant, suggesting alterations in the contribution of specific aerosol sources.

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