c©2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. The solubility of neon, nitrogen and argon in distilled water and seawater

Large discrepancies in published neon and nitrogen sol-ubility data limit the interpretation of oceanic measure-ments of these gases. We present new solubility measure-ments for neon, nitrogen and argon in distilled water and seawater, over a temperature range of 1–30 oC. Water was equilibrated with air at measured temperatures, salinities and pressures. Dissolved Ne concentrations were then determined by isotope dilution using a quadrupole mass spectrometer. Ratios of O2/N2/Ar were measured on a stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, from which abso-lute N2 and Ar concentrations were calculated using pub-lished O2 solubilities. We propose new equations, fitted to the data, for the equilibrium concentrations of Ne, N2 and Ar with estimated errors of 0.30%, 0.14 % and 0.13%, re-spectively. The Ar results matched those of most previous researchers within 0.4%. However, the Ne and N2 results were greater than those of Weiss (1971b, 1970) by 1 % or more.