| Summary: | This is chapter 5 of the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) report 2023. For this update of the HAZECLIC chapter in SESS report 2020, we studied the temporal evolution of the Arctic haze over the past decade in Ny Ålesund (at Gruvebadet and Zeppelin observatories) through data on atmospheric sulphate, which is the most reliable marker of Arctic haze. By using other source chemical markers, we managed to quantify the solely anthropic sulphate and study its behaviour between 2010 and 2022. Although detecting a trend was not straightforward, we observed decreasing levels of anthropic sulphate when the haze is present (April) while no trend could be observed when the haze is not present (September). These results have various implications: first, they suggest that atmospheric sulphate arising from anthropic activities and present during non-haze months has reached a bottom threshold, a sort of “background level” which is probably difficult to reduce further. Second, it appears that atmospheric sulphate is still slowly decreasing during haze months, likely due to a persistent long-term effect of stricter air quality policies.
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