Characteristics and environmental significance of pH and EC in summer rainfall and shallow firn profile at Yulong Snow Mountain, Lijiang City, China

Abstract

The seasonal and inter-annual variations of pH and EC (electrical conductivity) at Yulong (玉龙) Snow Mountain, Lijiang (丽江) City, are sensitive to precipitation variations and are important indicators of the atmospheric environment. The pH of summer rainfall at Lijiang City ranges from 6.7 to 7.4, and alkaline mineral salts dominate the variations of rainfall acidity. pH values in the

The evolution and environmental significance of glaciochemistry during the ablation period in the north of Tibetan Plateau, China

“…Moreover, the southeast monsoon originates from the North Pacific, crossing over most of southeastern China and conveying large quantities of precipitation to the Hengduan Mountains (He et al, 2003). Thus, the marine aerosols associated with the summer monsoon caused the excess of Cl À showing the strong marine contribution related to the monsoon circulation (Li et al, 2008a(Li et al, , 2008b(Li et al, , 2009a(Li et al, , 2009b(Li et al, , 2010. In addition, pollutants brought from industrial areas of South Asia, Southeast Asia and South China by monsoonal circulation also makes some contribution to anion concentrations in southern Tibetan Plateau, but pollution associated with human activities makes a very slight contribution in northern regions.…”

“…Chemical studies of snow are important because snow and glaciers, as sites of deposition of chemical components of the atmosphere, can provide crucial information about climatic and environmental changes (Johnsen et al, 1972;Barrie et al, 1985;Yao et al, 1989), and many researches have been made in Tibetan Plateau (Wake et al, 1993;Shrestha et al, 1997;Huang et al, 1998;Kang et al, 2000Kang et al, , 2004Kang et al, , 2007Xiao et al, 2002aXiao et al, , 2002bWu et al, 2011;Guo et al, 2012;Yue et al, 2013), Tianshan Mountains (Wang et al, 2011a(Wang et al, , 2011bZhang et al, 2011Zhang et al, , 2012Dong et al, 2013aDong et al, , 2013bFeng et al, 2014) and Hengduan Mountains (He et al, 2002a(He et al, , 2002bPang et al, 2007Pang et al, , 2012Li et al, 2008aLi et al, , 2008bLi et al, , 2009aLi et al, , 2009bLi et al, , 2010Zhu et al, 2012;Niu and He, 2014). Analysis of snow and ice chemistry could provide valuable information on the sources of atmospheric aerosols (Wolff, 1990;Legrand and Mayewski, 1997), atmosphere circulation (Kang et al, 2002;Xiao et al, 2002a;Aizen et al, 2004) and past climatic and environmental evolution (Hou et al, 2003;…”