Arctic Air Pollution: 1 New Insights From POLARCAT-IPY

Abstract

Given the rapid nature of climate change occurring in the Arctic and the difficulty for climate models to quantitatively reproduce observed changes such as sea ice loss, it is important to improve understanding of the processes leading to climate change in this region, including the role of short-lived climate pollutants such as aerosols and ozone. It has long been known that pollution produced from emissions at mid-latitudes can be transported to the Arctic resulting in a winter/spring aerosol maximum known as Arctic Haze. However, many uncertainties remain about the composition and origin of Arctic pollution throughout the troposphere; for example, many climate-chemistry models fail to reproduce the strong seasonality of aerosol abundance observed at Arctic surface sites, the origin and deposition mechanisms of black carbon (soot) particles that darken the snow and ice surface in the Arctic is poorly understood, and chemical processes controlling the abundance of tropospheric ozone are not well quantified.