Aerosol transport to the high Alpine sites Jungfraujoch (3454 m asl) and Colle Gnifetti (4452 m asl)

Abstract

Atmospheric transport processes, relevant to high Alpine sites, were deduced from 2 sets of aerosol records: a 9-year record from the Jungfraujoch (3454 m) on the northern side of the Swiss Alps and a 2.5-year record from Colle Gnifetti (4452 m) on the southern side. A classification scheme for synoptic weather types was applied to separate the aerosol data into groups corresponding to different atmospheric transport conditions. For both sites, vertical aerosol transport by thermally driven convection, acting between late spring and late summer, was found to be the dominant transport process. In summer, the thermally driven aerosol transport to both sites caused an increase of the seasonally averaged aerosol concentration between 0800 and 1800 local standard time by a factor of two. Under anticyclonic conditions, when subsidence on a synoptic scale is present, the thermally driven aerosol transport is most pronounced. Therefore, the aerosol determining thermal transport takes place within a synoptic scale vertical motion of opposite direction. Under cyclonic conditions, when lifting on a synoptic scale is present, the thermally driven aerosol transport is nearly absent. In winter, thermally driven convection does not contribute to the aerosol concentrations at both sites. Nevertheless, also in winter statistically significant differences in aerosol concentration were found between cyclonic and anticyclonic weather conditions, which can be attributed to the vertical transport acting on the synoptic scale. These differences in aerosol concentration were small compared to the corresponding differences in summer. Within the weather types, which are dominated by horizontal advection in the Alpine region, the aerosol concentrations are more diffcult to interpret with respect to the effective transport process.