Chemical markers for sea salt in IMPROVE aerosol data

The Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network monitors chemically speciated fine-particle concentrations at about 170 rural or remote sites in the United States, including several in coastal settings. Sea salt is a major component of marine aerosols, and can have significant optical effects on both global and local scales. Sodium is the most commonly employed chemical marker for sea salt, but the ion is not a target of IMPROVE's routine chromatography and the element is poorly detected by IMPROVE's routine X-ray fluorescence analysis. This paper examines data from six coastal sites where sea salt is abundant, to identify more reliable signatures of fresh sea salt in routine IMPROVE data. The chloride ion measurement, by ion chromatography on a Nylon filter sampling behind a carbonate denuder, appears to represent the total concentration of this reactive species at the selected sites. It is shown to be a good predictor of conserved sea salt markers such as non-crustal strontium, calcium and potassium, as well as the portion of gravimetric mass not explained by terrestrial fractions. These conclusions may not extend to other locations where sea salt is a smaller and more aged fraction of the aerosol mix.