Abstract
Atmospheric new particle formation (NPF) and growth significantly influences the indirect aerosol-cloud effect within the polar climate system. In this work, the aerosol population is categorised via cluster analysis of aerosol number size distributions (9–915 nm, 65 bins) taken at Villum Research Station, Station Nord (VRS) in North Greenland during a 7 year record (2010–2016). Data are clustered at daily averaged resolution; in total, we classified six categories, five of which clearly describe the ultrafine aerosol population, one of which is linked to nucleation events (up to 39% during summer). Air mass trajectory analyses tie these frequent nucleation events to biogenic precursors released by open water and melting sea ice regions. NPF events in the studied regions seem not to be related to bird colonies from coastal zones. Our results show a negative correlation (r = −0.89) between NPF events and sea ice extent, suggesting the impact of ultrafine Arctic aerosols is likely to increase in the future, given the likely increased sea ice melting. Understanding the composition and the sources of Arctic aerosols requires further integrated studies with joint multi-component ocean-atmosphere observation and modelling.
Highlights
Different measurements at Arctic sites show a strong annual cycle in aerosol characteristics[7,8]
Based on such cluster analysis, we identified six categories of aerosol number size distributions
Occurring annually 10% of the time, this aerosol category is characterized by very low particle number concentrations (
Summary
Different measurements at Arctic sites show a strong annual cycle in aerosol characteristics[7,8]. Due to the usually low concentrations of aerosol particles over the inner Arctic pack ice area in summer, natural surface particle sources have been emphasized to be much more important than transport from continental sources[9]. - to better understand the physical and chemical processes leading to a high nucleation/formation rate and a frequent appearance of clouds in the summertime Arctic - it is crucial to study the atmospheric natural emissions of the different surfaces in detail. We aimed to understand how the retreat of the Arctic sea ice affects the formation of new particles at the Villum Research station, Station Nord (VRS) in north-eastern Greenland (81.6°N, 16.7°W, 24 m), which is 608 km to the west-northwest of Zeppelin - a more studied monitoring site[8,15]. VRS is always located north of the polar Vortex representing the conditions of the high Arctic throughout the whole year
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