Source attribution of Arctic black carbon constrained by aircraft and surface measurements

• Main Authors: Wu, Jun-Wei, Martin, Randall V., Morrow, Andrew, Henze, Daven K., for a full list of authors., Please see bottom of the page
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: CU Scholar 2017
• Subjects: Arctic; Ny-Ålesund; black carbon; Ny Ålesund
• Online Access: https://scholar.colorado.edu/mcen_facpapers/31; https://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcen_facpapers

Black carbon (BC) contributes to Arctic warming, yet sources of Arctic BC and their geographic contributions remain uncertain. We interpret a series of recent airborne (NETCARE 2015; PAMARCMiP 2009 and 2011 campaigns) and ground-based measurements (at Alert, Barrow and Ny-Ålesund) from multiple methods (thermal, laser incandescence and light absorption) with the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model and its adjoint to attribute the sources of Arctic BC. This is the first comparison with a chemical transport model of refractory BC (rBC) measurements at Alert. The springtime airborne measurements performed by the NETCARE campaign in 2015 and the PAMARCMiP campaigns in 2009 and 2011 offer BC vertical profiles extending to above 6 km across the Arctic and include profiles above Arctic ground monitoring stations. Our simulations with the addition of seasonally varying domestic heating and of gas flaring emissions are consistent with ground-based measurements of BC concentrations at Alert and Barrow in winter and spring (rRMSE < 13 %) and with airborne measurements of the BC vertical profile across the Arctic (rRMSE = 17 %) except for an underestimation in the middle troposphere (500–700 hPa).