The BRomine, Ozone, and Mercury EXperiment (BROMEX)
Abstract
In the decade of the 2000s, Arctic perennial (multi-year) sea ice has diminished drastically, whereas seasonal (first-year) sea ice has become the dominant ice class. This change effectively increases the overall surface salinity of the sea ice cover and in the overlying snowpack. Satellite results in 2010 and 2011 show the extent of perennial sea ice remains minimal with significant bromine explosions in the springtime. Key science questions still remain to be answered to understand the impact of the Arctic perennial sea ice reduction on low-atmospheric physical and chemical processes. Of the highest priority is to investigate the impact on bromine explosion events that lead to depletion of ozone and gaseous elementary mercury in the atmosphere. With that objective, we present the development of the BRomine, Ozone, and Mercury EXperiment in (BROMEX) in spring 2012 around Barrow, extending out to 200 km offshore and inland. In BROMEX, chemical, sea ice, snow, and ocean measurements will be made across sea ice leads both upwind and downwind areas of newly opened leads. Chemical-measurement buoys and other types of buoys will be deployed with helicopter flights to both sides of the leads. Various flight patterns of aircraft carrying ozone and bromine-measuring sensors will be used to characterize the chemical distribution over sea ice, land, and mountainous regions. Our approach will use data from multiple satellite instruments including MODIS, AMSR-E, QuikSCAT, GOME-2, SCIAMACHY, OMI, RADARSAT-2, Envisat ASAR, TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, SMOS, CryoSat-2 altimeter, and Oceansat-2 scatterometer. Moreover, results from recent field campaigns such as the IPY OASIS, INCATPA, CFL, SALT, and IceBridge, from sea ice and snow products generated by the U.S. Naval and National Ice Center, from NASA cryospheric observations, and from surface observation networks such as SIZONet will be utilized together with new measurements from BROMEX. Further collaborations with the international research communities related to chemistry, sea ice, snow, atmospheric processes, and biology are being arranged.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.A13F0438N
- Keywords:
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- 0365 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0368 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- 0750 CRYOSPHERE / Sea ice;
- 0793 CRYOSPHERE / Biogeochemistry