Abstract
Abstract. We conducted continuous measurements of nanoparticles down to 3 nm size in the Arctic at Mount Zeppelin, Ny Ålesund, Svalbard, from October 2016 to December 2018, providing a size distribution of nanoparticles (3–60 nm). A significant number of nanoparticles as small as 3 nm were often observed during new particle formation (NPF), particularly in summer, suggesting that these were likely produced near the site rather than being transported from other regions after growth. The average NPF frequency per year was 23 %, having the highest percentage in August (63 %). The average formation rate (J) and growth rate (GR) for 3–7 nm particles were 0.04 cm−3 s−1 and 2.07 nm h−1, respectively. Although NPF frequency in the Arctic was comparable to that in continental areas, the J and GR were much lower. The number of nanoparticles increased more frequently when air mass originated over the south and southwest ocean regions; this pattern overlapped with regions having strong chlorophyll a concentration and dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production capacity (southwest ocean) and was also associated with increased NH3 and H2SO4 concentration, suggesting that marine biogenic sources were responsible for gaseous precursors to NPF. Our results show that previously developed NPF occurrence criteria (low loss rate and high cluster growth rate favor NPF) are also applicable to NPF in the Arctic.
Highlights
The Arctic climate system is affected by the region’s snowcovered land, sea ice, and ocean, making the region vulnerable to global climate change (Jeffries and Richter-Menge, 2012)
We compared our nano-SMPS data with DMPS data at the same station as shown in Fig. S1 in the Supplement, suggesting that they were in a good agreement
Due to the higher latitude of the site, the solar radiation (SRAD) was lower than values reported at other continental sites (449 W m−2 during New particle formation (NPF) in Lanzhou, China, Gao et al, 2011; 422–445 W m−2 during NPF in Pallas, Finland, Asmi et al, 2011; and > 750 W m−2 during NPF in Atlanta, USA, Woo et al, 2010)
Summary
The Arctic climate system is affected by the region’s snowcovered land, sea ice, and ocean, making the region vulnerable to global climate change (Jeffries and Richter-Menge, 2012). Suggested that NPF at the Mount Zeppelin site was related to solar flux and sea surface temperature, affecting marine biological processes and photochemical reactions with less CS They reported the potential source regions for NPF to be the marginal-ice and open-water areas between northeastern Greenland and eastern Svalbard. We measured number size distribution of nanoparticles down to 3 nm for the first time at Zeppelin station, and we obtained continuous size distributions of 3– 60 nm particles every 3 min from October 2016 to December 2018 This allowed the size distribution of nanoparticles to be determined with a lower size limit than before, enabling better identification of whether freshly nucleated particles formed on site or were transported from other regions after substantial growth. Recent studies showed that there was a strong correlation between sea surface chlorophyll a concentration (estimated by MODIS Aqua) and atmospheric DMS levels at Zeppelin station (Park et al, 2013, 2018)
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