Polar Aerosol Atmospheric Rivers: Detection, Characteristics, and Potential Applications ...

• Main Authors: Lapere, Rémy, Thomas, Jennie L., Favier, Vincent, Angot, Hélène, Asplund, Julia, Ekman, Annica M.L., Marelle, Louis, Raut, Jean-Christophe, Da Silva, Anderson, Wille, Jonathan Douglas, Zieger, Paul
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: ETH Zurich 2024
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Arctic; black carbon
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000654799; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/654799

Aerosols play a key role in polar climate, and are affected by long-range transport from the mid-latitudes, both in the Arctic and Antarctic. This work investigates poleward extreme transport events of aerosols, referred to as polar aerosol atmospheric rivers (p-AAR), leveraging the concept of atmospheric rivers (AR) which signal extreme transport of moisture. Using reanalysis data, we build a detection catalog of p-AARs for black carbon, dust, sea salt and organic carbon aerosols, for the period 1980-2022. First, we describe the detection algorithm, discuss its sensitivity, and evaluate its validity. Then, we present several extreme transport case studies, in the Arctic and in the Antarctic, illustrating the complementarity between ARs and p-AARs. Despite similarities in transport pathways during co-occurring AR/p-AAR events, vertical profiles differ depending on the species, and large-scale transport patterns show that moisture and aerosols do not necessarily originate from the same areas. The ... : Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129 (2) ...