Correcting Laser-Based Water Stable Isotope Readings Biased by Carrier Gas Changes

Recently, laser-based water stable isotope spectrometers have become popular as they enable previously impossible approaches of environmental observations. Consequently, they have been subjected to increasingly heterogeneous atmospheric conditions. However, there is still a severe lack of data on the impact of nonstandardized gas matrices on analyzer performances. Against this background, we investigated the influence of changing proportions of N-2, O-2, and CO2 in the carrier gas on the isotope measurements of a typical laser-based water stable isotope analyzer (Picarro L2120-0. We combined environmentally relevant mixtures of N-2, O-2, and CO2 with referenced, flash-evaporated water and found that isotope readings of the same water were altered by up to +14.57 parts per thousand for delta O-18 and -35.9 parts per thousand for delta H-2. All tested relationships between carrier gas changes and respective isotope readings were strongly linearly correlated (R-2 > 0.99). Furthermore, an analyzer-measured variable allowed for reliable postcorrection of the biased isotope readings, which we additionally tested on field data. Our findings are of importance for environmental data obtained by analyzers based on the same technology. They are relevant for assays where inconsistent gas matrices or a mismatch in this regard between unknown and reference analyses cannot be excluded, which is in particular common when investigating the soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum.