Physical and chemical properties of pollution aerosol particles transported from North America to Greenland as measured during the POLARCAT summer campaign

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Quennehen, Boris, Schwarzenboeck, Alfons, Schmale, J., Schneider, Jodi, Sodemann, H., Stohl, A., Ancellet, Gérard, Crumeyrolle, S., Law, Kathy S.
• Other Authors: Laboratoire de météorologie physique (LaMP), Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 (UBP)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (MPIC), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science Zürich (IAC), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich), TROPO - LATMOS, Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2011
• Subjects: [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-AO-PH]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; Aitken; Arctic; Greenland; black carbon
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00586439; https://hal.science/hal-00586439/document; https://hal.science/hal-00586439/file/acp-11-10947-2011.pdf; https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-10947-2011

International audience Within the framework of the POLARCAT-France campaign, aerosol physical, chemical and optical properties over Greenland were measured onboard the French ATR-42 research aircraft. The Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART was used to determine air mass origins. The study focuses particularly on the characterization of air masses transported from the North American continent. Air masses that picked up emissions from Canadian and Alaskan boreal forest fires as well as from the cities on the American east coast were identified and selected for a detailed study. Measurements of CO concentrations, aerosol chemical composition, aerosol size distributions, aerosol volatile fractions and aerosol light absorption (mainly from black carbon) are used in order to study the relationship between CO enhancement, ageing of the air masses, aerosol particle concentrations and size distributions. Aerosol size distributions are in good agreement with previous studies, even though, wet scavenging potentially occurred along the pathway between the emission sources and Greenland leading to lower concentrations in the aerosol accumulation mode. The measured aerosol size distributions show a significant enhancement of Aitken mode particles. It is demonstrated that the Aitken mode is largely composed of black carbon, while the accumulation mode is more dominated by organics, as deduced from aerosol mass spectrometric AMS and aerosol volatility measurements. Overall, during the campaign rather small amounts of black carbon from the North American continent were transported towards Greenland. An important finding given the potential climate impacts of black carbon in the Arctic.