Polar winter sea-salt events over the high Arctic over the high-Arctic research station of Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen
Abstract
The effects of aerosols are acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC) to be the greatest uncertainty in the climate change radiation budget. Furthermore because of the surface-atmosphere system conditions observed in Polar Regions, climate change effects are magnified over the Arctic. Sea-salt aerosol is an important natural aerosol affecting the atmospheric system during the polar winter by virtue of its relatively strong optical influence. In general, sea-salt aerosols, the result of wind-driven sea spray, consists of both accumulation and coarse mode particles. In this research, we focus on the Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen site because of the dominant North Atlantic, wind circulation patterns during the polar winter which result in transport of sea-salt aerosols to the Spitsbergen region and because the analysis can be supported by a long climatological-scale database of starphotometer measurements at Ny Alesund. Examples of potential polar winter sea salt events over and near Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen will be presented. A combination of starphotometry aerosol optical depth (AOD) data, satellite based CALIOP (lidar) profiles and derived AODs as well as in-situ NaCl concentration measurements at Ny Alesund were employed to detect sea-salt aerosol events during time periods when we believed that this type of aerosol was likely present : simulations of the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model were employed to guide our search for this type of aerosol and, in general, to better understand the dynamics of sea salt transport to the high Arctic.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.A53C0304O
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0322 Constituent sources and sinks;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES