Contributions of modern and dead organic carbon to individual fatty acid homologues in spring aerosols collected from northern Japan

Abstract

Radiocarbon (14C) and stable carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) have been used as proxies to evaluate the contributions of modern/fossil carbon and marine/terrestrial organic matter, respectively, in geochemical samples. However, there are few such studies in atmospheric aerosols. Here, we measured 14C contents and δ13C of individual n‐fatty acids in an aerosol sample collected from northern Japan in spring 2001 during Asian dust season. Our results show that the distribution of fatty acids in the spring aerosols was characterized by a strong even/odd carbon number predominance with two maxima at C16 and C26. Their δ13C (range: −30.6 to −20.5‰) showed higher values (average: −24.5‰) for lower molecular weight (LMW) fatty acids (C16 − C19) and lower values (average: −29.7‰) for higher MW (HMW) fatty acids (C20 − C32). This difference suggests that LMW acids are mainly derived from lacustrine and/or marine algal sources whereas HMW acids are predominantly from terrestrial C3 higher plants. Δ14C values of fatty acids were found to range from −96.9 to +122.9‰ with lower values for HMW acids and higher values for LMW acids. LMW acids in the aerosols contain only modern carbon. In contrast, HMW acids ≥C24 were found to contain up to 9.7 wt% dead carbon, although their major portion (up to 92.3%) is composed of modern carbon. Backward trajectory analyses indicated that the source regions of the spring aerosols were dominated by central and north China (62%). This study suggests that the old fatty acids in the spring aerosols are most likely originated from the loess deposits in China via long‐range atmospheric transport over the western North Pacific, although their contribution to the aerosols was relatively small.