A signature of aged biogenic compounds detected from airborne VOC measurements in the high arctic atmosphere in March/April 2018

Abstract

During the PAMARCMiP 2018 campaign (March and April 2018) a proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS) was deployed onboard the POLAR 5 research aircraft and sampled the high Arctic atmosphere under Arctic haze conditions. More than 100 compounds exhibited levels above 1 pmol/mol in at least 25% of the measurements. We used acetone mixing ratios, ozone concentrations, and back trajectories to identify periods with and without long-range transport from continental sources. During two flights, surface ozone depletion events (ODE) were observed that coincided with enhanced levels of acetone, and methylethylketone, and ice nucleating particles (INP).Air masses with continental influence contained elevated levels of compounds associated with aged biogenic emissions and anthropogenic pollution (e.g., methanol, peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN), acetone, acetic acid, methylethylketone (MEK), proprionic acid, and pentanone). Almost half of all positively detected compounds (>100) in the high Arctic atmosphere can be associated with terpene oxidation products, likely produced from monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes emitted from boreal forests. We speculate that the transport of biogenic terpene emissions may constitute an important control of the High Arctic aerosol burden. The sum concentration of the detected aerosol forming vapours is ∼12 pmol/mol, which is of the same order than measured dimethylsulfide (DMS) mixing ratios and their mass density corresponds to approximately one fifth of the measured non-black-carbon particles.