Observed metre scale horizontal variability of elemental carbon in surface snow

Surface snow investigated for its elemental carbon (EC) concentration, based on a thermal–optical method, at two different sites during winter and spring of 2010 demonstrates metre scale horizontal variability in concentration. Based on the two sites sampled, a clean and a polluted site, the clean s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental Research Letters
Main Authors: J Svensson, J Ström, M Hansson, H Lihavainen, V-M Kerminen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2013
Subjects:
black carbon
elemental carbon
surface snow
metre scale variability
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Science
Q
Physics
QC1-999
Arctic
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034012
https://doaj.org/article/f8b58b4a6c184a359c606a42c9e3a1d8
Description
Summary:Surface snow investigated for its elemental carbon (EC) concentration, based on a thermal–optical method, at two different sites during winter and spring of 2010 demonstrates metre scale horizontal variability in concentration. Based on the two sites sampled, a clean and a polluted site, the clean site (Arctic Finland) presents the greatest variability. In side-by-side ratios between neighbouring samples, 5 m apart, a ratio of around two was observed for the clean site. The median for the polluted site had a ratio of 1.2 between neighbouring samples. The results suggest that regions exposed to snowdrift may be more sensitive to horizontal variability in EC concentration. Furthermore, these results highlight the importance of carefully choosing sampling sites and timing, as each parameter will have some effect on EC variability. They also emphasize the importance of gathering multiple samples from a site to obtain a representative value for the area.

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