Effect of seasonal mesoscale and microscale meteorological conditions in Ny-Ålesund on results of monitoring of long-range transported pollution

• Published in: Polar Research
• Main Authors: Dekhtyareva, Alena, Holmen, Kim, Graversen, Rune, Maturilli, Marion, Hermansen, Ove
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Taylor & Francis Production 2018
• Subjects: Ny Ålesund; Ny-Ålesund; Polar Research
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/47753/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/47753/1/Dekhtyareva.pdf; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17518369.2018.1508196; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.a73803df-70e9-4926-acb9-e6cd3dd1e7a9

Ny-Ålesund is an international research settlement where the monitoring of thermodynamics and chemical composition of the air is performed. In order to keep the data comparable to similar long-term observations from other sites, the local impact on the measurements is studied to be potentially reduced. The present work investigates the effects of micrometeorological conditions, mesoscale dynamics and local air pollution on the data collected at two different locations around the village. Daily filter measurements of sulphur dioxide and non-sea salt sulphate from the temporary Ny-Ålesund station and permanent Zeppelin mountain station have been analysed along with meteorological data. The influence of different factors representing micrometeorological phenomena and local pollution from ships has been statistically investigated. Seasonal variation of the correlation between the data from Ny-Ålesund and Zeppelin stations is revealed, and the seasonal dependence of the relative contribution of different factors has been analysed. The median concentrations of SO42- measured in Ny-Ålesund increased significantly on days with temperature inversions in winter. In spring, concentrations of SO2 and SO42- were higher at both stations on days with temperature inversions, but lower on days with strong humidity inversions. In summer, local ship traffic affects the SO2 dataset from Ny-Ålesund, while no statistically significant influence on the Zeppelin dataset has been observed. The pollution from ships has an effect on SO42- values at both stations; however, the concentrations in Ny-Ålesund were higher when local pollution accumulated close to the ground in days with strong humidity inversions.