The effects of sampling and extraction methods on the solubility of trace elements in marine aerosols

The solubility of trace elements in marine aerosols plays an important role in precisely assessing the atmospheric flux and the biogeochemical behavior of trace elements in the ocean.The previous studies showed that there existed significant difference in the solubility of trace elements in the aerosols.In addition to the impact of its own physical and chemical properties and the effect of atmospheric process during its migration, the difference derived from different sampling and extraction methods may be the crucial reason for this phenomenon.This problem is more prominent for the marine aerosol with low trace element content. These systematic errors may not only affect the comparability of previous studies, but also not conducive to the interpretation of data.Therefore, an international science plan, named as "An International Study of Marine Biogeochemical Cycles of Trace Elements and their Isotopes (GEOTRACES)" in 2008 launched marine aerosol international inter-calibration experiments.This article reviews the results from the 2008 GEOTRACES aerosol inter-calibration experiments, compares the samplers, filters, leaching and digestion methods of marine aerosol, and thereby providing suggestions on the most optimized methods of sampling and extracting marine aerosols.