Regions of open water and melting sea ice drive new particle formation in North East Greenland

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Dall'Osto, Manuel, Geels. C., Beddows, D.C.S., Boertmann, D., Lange, R., Nøjgaard, Jacob Klenø, Harrison, Roy M., Simó, Rafel, Massling, Andreas
• Other Authors: Natural Environment Research Council (UK), Danish Environmental Protection Agency, Nordic Centre of Excellence (Norway), Villum Fonden, European Commission, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Danish Council for Independent Research
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Springer Nature 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Station Nord; AMAP; Arctic monitoring and assessment program; East Greenland; North Greenland; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/165444; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24426-8; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003329; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000270; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780; https://doi.org/10.13039/100008398

10 pages, 5 figures, supporting information https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24426-8 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 The study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy through projects BIO-NUC (CGL2013-49020-R) and RyC (RYC-2012-11922), and by the EU though the FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IOF programme (Project number 624680, MANU – Marine Aerosol NUcleations). The National Centre for Atmospheric Science NCAS Birmingham group is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council. [.] This work was financially supported by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency with means from the MIKA/DANCEA funds for Environmental Support to the Arctic Region, which is part of the Danish contribution to “Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program” (AMAP) and to the Danish research project “Short lived Climate Forcers” (SLCF), and the ...