Affordable event and monthly rain samplers: Improving isotopic datasets to understand meteorological processes.

Rationale: Water-stable isotopes in rainfall are powerful tracers of atmospheric processes at different spatial and temporal scales. However, commercially available rain samplers for isotopic analysis are prohibitively expensive, especially for high spatial resolution networks and studies conducted in developing countries. A low-cost, simple, and robust sampler was designed for event and monthly rainfall samplings.

Molecular profiling of naphthenic acids in technical mixtures and oil sands process-affected water using polar reversed-phase liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

In this work, a reversed-phase ultra-HPLC (UHPLC) ultrahigh resolution MS (UHRMS) method was evaluated for the comprehensive profiling of NAs containing two O atoms in each molecule (O2NAs; general formula C H O , where n is the number of carbon atoms and z represents hydrogen deficiency). Using a polar cyanopropyl-bonded phase column and negative-ion electrospray ionization mass spectrometric detection at 120,000 FWHM (m/z 400), 187 and 226 O2NA species were found in two naphthenic acid technical mixtures, and 424 and 198 species with molecular formulas corresponding to O2NAs were found in two oil sands process-affected water samples (one from a surface mining operation and the other from a steam-assisted gravity drainage operation), respectively. To our knowledge, these are the highest numbers of molecular compositions of O2NAs that have been profiled thus far in environmental samples.

Jasechko et al. reply.

replying to A. M. J.

Fate and transport of oil sand process-affected water into the underlying clay till: a field study.

The South Tailings Pond (STP) is a ~2300-ha tailing pond operated by Suncor Energy Inc. that has received oil sand process-affected (PA) water and mature fine tailings since 2006. The STP is underlain by a clay till, which is in turn underlain by the Wood Creek Sand Channel (WCSC).

Terrestrial water fluxes dominated by transpiration.

Renewable fresh water over continents has input from precipitation and losses to the atmosphere through evaporation and transpiration. Global-scale estimates of transpiration from climate models are poorly constrained owing to large uncertainties in stomatal conductance and the lack of catchment-scale measurements required for model calibration, resulting in a range of predictions spanning 20 to 65 per cent of total terrestrial evapotranspiration (14,000 to 41,000 km(3) per year) (refs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Here we use the distinct isotope effects of transpiration and evaporation to show that transpiration is by far the largest water flux from Earth's continents, representing 80 to 90 per cent of terrestrial evapotranspiration.