Observations of atmospheric chemical deposition to high Arctic snow

Rapidly rising temperatures and loss of snow and ice cover have demonstrated the unique vulnerability of the high Arctic to climate change. There are major uncertainties in modelling the chemical depositional and scavenging processes of Arctic snow. To that end, fresh snow samples collected on avera...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Main Authors: K. M. Macdonald, S. Sharma, D. Toom, A. Chivulescu, S. Hanna, A. K. Bertram, A. Platt, M. Elsasser, L. Huang, D. Tarasick, N. Chellman, J. R. McConnell, H. Bozem, D. Kunkel, Y. D. Lei, G. J. Evans, J. P. D. Abbatt
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2017
Subjects:
Physics
QC1-999
Chemistry
QD1-999
Arctic
Nunavut
black carbon
Climate change
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5775-2017
https://doaj.org/article/41498726233547fea93e21fb605a1e61
Description
Summary:Rapidly rising temperatures and loss of snow and ice cover have demonstrated the unique vulnerability of the high Arctic to climate change. There are major uncertainties in modelling the chemical depositional and scavenging processes of Arctic snow. To that end, fresh snow samples collected on average every 4 days at Alert, Nunavut, from September 2014 to June 2015 were analyzed for black carbon, major ions, and metals, and their concentrations and fluxes were reported. Comparison with simultaneous measurements of atmospheric aerosol mass loadings yields effective deposition velocities that encompass all processes by which the atmospheric species are transferred to the snow. It is inferred from these values that dry deposition is the dominant removal mechanism for several compounds over the winter while wet deposition increased in importance in the fall and spring, possibly due to enhanced scavenging by mixed-phase clouds. Black carbon aerosol was the least efficiently deposited species to the snow.

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