Sub-permil interlaboratory consistency for solution-based boron isotope analyses on marine carbonates
Abstract
Boron isotopes in marine carbonates are increasingly used to reconstruct seawater pH and atmospheric pCO2 through Earth’s history. While isotope ratio measurements from individual laboratories are often of high quality, it is important that records generated in different laboratories can equally be compared. Within this Boron Isotope Intercomparison Project (BIIP), we characterised the boron isotopic composition (commonly expressed in δ11B) of two marine carbonates: Geological Survey of Japan carbonate reference materials JCp‐1 (coral Porites) and JCt‐1 (giant clam Tridacna gigas). Our study has three foci: (a) to assess the extent to which oxidative pre‐treatment, aimed at removing organic material from carbonate, can influence the resulting δ11B; (b) to determine to what degree the chosen analytical approach may affect the resultant δ11B; and (c) to provide well‐constrained consensus δ11B values for JCp‐1 and JCt‐1. The resultant robust mean and associated robust standard deviation (s*) for un‐oxidised JCp‐1 is 24.36 ± 0.45‰ (2s*), compared with 24.25 ± 0.22‰ (2s*) for the same oxidised material. For un‐oxidised JCt‐1, respective compositions are 16.39 ± 0.60‰ (2s*; un‐oxidised) and 16.24 ± 0.38‰ (2s*; oxidised). The consistency between laboratories is generally better if carbonate powders were oxidatively cleaned prior to purification and measurement.
Citation
Gutjahr , M , Bordier , L , Douville , E , Farmer , J , Foster , G L , Hathorne , E C , Hönisch , B , Lemarchand , D , Louvat , P , McCulloch , M , Noireaux , J , Pallavicini , N , Rae , J W B , Rodushkin , I , Roux , P , Stewart , J A , Thil , F & You , C-F 2020 , ' Sub-permil interlaboratory consistency for solution-based boron isotope analyses on marine carbonates ' , Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1111/ggr.12364
Publication
Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1639-4488Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the International Association of Geoanalysts This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
JWBR received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 805246) and from the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) grant NE/N011716/1.Collections
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