Abstract
The Arctic environment has changed profoundly in recent decades. Aerosol particles are involved in numerous feedback mechanisms in the Arctic, e.g., aerosol-cloud/radiation interactions, which have important climatic implications. To understand changes in different Arctic aerosol types and number concentrations, we have performed a trend analysis of particle number size distributions, their properties, and their associated air mass history at Villum Research Station, northeastern Greenland, from 2010 to 2018. We found that, during spring, the total/ultrafine mode number concentration and the time air masses spent over the open ocean is significantly increasing, which can be ascribed to transport patterns changing to more frequent arrival from the ice-free Greenland Sea. We found that, during summer, the total/ultrafine mode number concentration, the occurrence of the Nucleation cluster (i.e. newly formed particles from gas to particle conversion), and the time air masses spent over the open ocean is significantly increasing. This can also be attributed to changing transport patterns, here with air masses arriving more frequently from Baffin Bay. Finally, we found that, during autumn, the ultrafine number concentration and the occurrence of the Pristine cluster (i.e. clean, natural Arctic background conditions) is significantly increasing, which is likely due to increasing amounts of accumulated precipitation along the trajectory path and decreasing time air masses spent above the mixed layer, respectively. Our results demonstrate that changing circulation and precipitation patterns are the factors predominantly affecting the trends in aerosol particle number concentrations and the occurrence of different aerosol types in northeastern Greenland.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 62 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 1 Aug 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Villum Foundation is gratefully acknowledged for financing the establishment of Villum Research. Thanks to the Royal Danish Air Force and the Arctic Command for providing logistic support to the project. Christel Christoffersen, Bjarne Jensen, and Keld Mortensen are gratefully acknowledged for their technical support. Martine Collaud Coen and her team are gratefully acknowledged for the creation of the 3PW algorithm ( https://mannkendall.github.io/index.html ). Jacob Carstensen is acknowledged for useful discussions about trend analysis methodology. This research has been financially supported by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency and the Danish Energy Agency with means from MIKA/DANCEA funds for environmental support to the Arctic region (project nos. Danish EPA: MST-113-00-140; Ministry of Climate, Energy, and Utilities: 2018-3767) and ERA-PLANET (The European Network for observing our changing Planet) Projects; iGOSP and iCUPE, the Graduate School of Science and Technology at Aarhus University, and the Swiss Data Science Center project C20-01 Arctic climate change: exploring the Natural Aerosol baseline for improved model Predictions (ArcticNAP).
Funding Information:
Villum Foundation is gratefully acknowledged for financing the establishment of Villum Research. Thanks to the Royal Danish Air Force and the Arctic Command for providing logistic support to the project. Christel Christoffersen, Bjarne Jensen, and Keld Mortensen are gratefully acknowledged for their technical support. Martine Collaud Coen and her team are gratefully acknowledged for the creation of the 3PW algorithm (https://mannkendall.github.io/index.html). Jacob Carstensen is acknowledged for useful discussions about trend analysis methodology. This research has been financially supported by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency and the Danish Energy Agency with means from MIKA/DANCEA funds for environmental support to the Arctic region (project nos. Danish EPA: MST-113-00-140; Ministry of Climate, Energy, and Utilities: 2018-3767) and ERA-PLANET (The European Network for observing our changing Planet) Projects; iGOSP and iCUPE, the Graduate School of Science and Technology at Aarhus University, and the Swiss Data Science Center project C20-01 Arctic climate change: exploring the Natural Aerosol baseline for improved model Predictions (ArcticNAP).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Global and Planetary Change
- Environmental Chemistry
- Atmospheric Science