PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF AEROSOLS OVER THE WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN

Marine aerosol from the western Pacific were collected by two types of samplers during a cruise from Nanhai of China through the west of Philippines to the equatorial and to the north-eastern of Solomon Archipelago. Collected samples were analyzed by PIXE. The data gave aerosol characteristics over the western Pacific, including concentrations, enrichmens and mass size distributions of detected elements, and possible sources of these elements were specially researched. The result indicates that Al, Si and Fe were associated with soil particles; Cl, Br, K, Ca and S showed characteristics of the sea-salt origin; and Cu, Zn and Pb were due to pollution from long-range transport of continental aerosol. We have also made comparison with data obtained in earlier studies over other regions of the Pacific.