Size-fractionated aerosol composition during an intensive 1997 summer field campaign in northern Finland

A 12-stage small deposit area low pressure impactor (SDI) was used to collect size-fractionated aerosol samples during an intensive 1997 summer field campaign in northern Finland. The samples were analyzed for over 20 elements by PIXE, and some “difficult” elements such as As and Se could be quantified. The sea-salt and crustal elements had essentially a unimodal coarse size distribution with geometric mean aerodynamic diameter (GMAD) of about 4–5 μm. In one third of the samples, S showed only one mode in the fine size range, with GMAD of 0.4–0.5 μm. In the other samples, this fine S mode broke up into two modes, with GMADs of 0.3 and 0.6 μm, respectively. V, Zn, As, Se and Pb were mainly present in a single submicrometer mode, with GMAD of 0.4–0.5 μm for V and Se, and slightly larger (i.e., 0.6 μm) for the other three elements. The highest concentrations of S, V, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Se and Pb were encountered in the SDI sample which had been collected in the period 14–16 July. During this sampling, the air masses came in from the west, but had recirculated over northern Scandinavia and passed over the Kola peninsula.