Collective geographical ecoregions and precursor sources driving Arctic new particle formation

James Brean*, David C.S. Beddows, Roy M. Harrison, Congbo Song, Peter Tunved, Johan Ström, Radovan Krejci, Eyal Freud, Andreas Massling, Henrik Skov, Eija Asmi, Angelo Lupi, Manuel Dall'osto*

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

The Arctic is a rapidly changing ecosystem, with complex ice-ocean-atmosphere feedbacks. An important process is new particle formation (NPF), from gas-phase precursors, which provides a climate forcing effect. NPF has been studied comprehensively at different sites in the Arctic, ranging from those in the High Arctic and those at Svalbard to those in the continental Arctic, but no harmonised analysis has been performed on all sites simultaneously, with no calculations of key NPF parameters available for some sites. Here, we analyse the formation and growth of new particles from six long-term ground-based stations in the Arctic (Alert, Villum, Tiksi, Zeppelin Mountain, Gruvebadet, and Utqiaġvik). Our analysis of particle formation and growth rates in addition to back-trajectory analysis shows a summertime maxima in the frequency of NPF and particle formation rate at all sites, although the mean frequency and particle formation rates themselves vary greatly between sites, with the highest at Svalbard and lowest in the High Arctic. The summertime growth rate, condensational sinks, and vapour source rates show a slight bias towards the southernmost sites, with vapour source rates varying by around an order of magnitude between the northernmost and southernmost sites. Air masses back-trajectories during NPF at these northernmost sites are associated with large areas of sea ice and snow, whereas events at Svalbard are associated with more sea ice and ocean regions. Events at the southernmost sites are associated with large areas of land and sea ice. These results emphasise how understanding the geographical variation in surface type across the Arctic is key to understanding secondary aerosol sources and providing a harmonised analysis of NPF across the Arctic.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2183-2198
Number of pages16
JournalAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Volume23
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research has been supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant nos. CTM2017-89117-R, CGL2013-49020-R, and RYC-2012-11922), the Natural Environment Research Council (grant no. NE/S00579X/1), and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).

The aerosol and meteorological data for Utqiaġvik and Tiksi were downloaded from the International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere ( https://www.iasoa.org , last access: 21 August 2021) consortium website. For the Alert observations, we are grateful to the Canadian Department of National Defence, Andrew Platt, Sangeeta Sharma, Desiree Toom, Dan Veber, and the Alert operators. Funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 programmes of ACTRIS (grant no. 654109) and INTAROS (project no. 727890) are acknowledged (Eija Asmi). Observations at Zeppelin Mountain observatory were supported by Swedish Environmental Protection agency (Naturvårdsverket) and by the ACAS project funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The study has been supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (SEANA; grant no. NE/S00579X/1), the Spanish Ministry of Economy through projects BIOeNUC (grant no. CGL2013–49020-R) and PI-ICE (grant no. CTM2017–89117-R) and the Ramón y Cajal fellowship (grant no. RYC-2012-11922). The authors also acknowledge financial support (to David C. S. Beddows) from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS; grant no. R8/H12/83/011), funded by UK Natural Environment Research Council. Finally, the authors from Aarhus University have been financially supported by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency and Danish Ministry for Climate Energy and Utilities via the MIKA/DANCEA funds for Environmental Support to the Arctic Region. As stressed in Freud et al. (2017), we would also like to express our appreciation and gratitude for the work and effort of all the scientists and engineers involved in setting up and maintaining the Arctic aerosol sites. The figures were created using the R software (R Core Team, 2022).

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ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Atmospheric Science

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