PRELIMINARY ANALYSES OF TRACE ELEMENTS IN SINGLE PARTICLES FROM SURFACE SNOW DEPOSITED IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT OF COLUMBUS, OHIO

Industrialization has resulted in dramatically increased concentrations of particulate matter in our atmosphere associated with fuel combustion from motor vehicles, heat and power generation, and industrial facilities. Many previous studies (e.g. Gabrielli et al., 2008; Huang et al., 2020) have applied bulk analysis to correlate altered trace element concentrations in surface snow samples to anthropogenic forcing and provenance throughout multiple locations in both hemispheres. However, when conducting bulk analysis with samples of this nature, only average information about the atmospheric particles are obtained making it hard to constrain precisely their provenance and thus identify whether particles originated from anthropogenic emissions or natural sources. A novel approach is to measure concentrations of trace elements within a single particle, therefore obtaining elemental concentrations from within originally deposited particles. Within this study we apply a novel single particle trace element analysis of surface snow samples to develop a preliminary data set from several high traffic urban environments throughout the Columbus Ohio University District in order to establish a baseline of trace element concentrations (Al, Si, Ti, Fe, Zn, Ce, Pb) within the single particles. Particles and the bulk samples were analyzed by Single Particle Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (spICP-QMS) at the Trace Element Research Laboratory (The Ohio State University, OSU) and by Inductively Coupled Plasma Sector Field Mass Spectrometer (ICP-SFMS) at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (OSU). This study aims to develop a reliable method of measuring single particles within surface snow accumulations from urban areas and constrain the relationship between single particles and their provenance.