Insoluble aerosol particles trapped in glacial ice provide insight into pastclimates, but analysis requires information on climatically relevant particleproperties, such as size, abundance, and internal mixing. We present a newanalytical method using a time-of-flight single-particle mass spectrometer(SPMS) to determine the composition and size of insoluble particles inglacial ice over an aerodynamic size range of ∼ 0.2–3.0 µm diameter. Using samples from two Greenland ice cores, we developeda procedure to nebulize insoluble particles suspended in melted ice,evaporate condensed liquid from those particles, and transport them to theSPMS for analysis. We further determined size-dependent extraction andinstrument transmission efficiencies to investigate the feasibility ofdetermining particle-class-specific mass concentrations. We find SPMS can beused to provide constraints on the aerodynamic size, composition, andrelative abundance of most insoluble particulate classes in ice core samples.We describe the importance of post-aqueous processing to particles, a processwhich occurs due to nebulization of aerosols from an aqueous suspension oforiginally soluble and insoluble aerosol components. This study represents aninitial attempt to use SPMS as an emerging technique for the study ofinsoluble particulates in ice cores.
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