A three-dimensional residence-time analysis of potential summertime atmospheric transport to Summit, Greenland

Abstract

The interannual variations in atmospheric transport patterns to Summit, Greenland, are studied using twice-daily, three-dimensional, 10 day backward trajectory data corresponding to the summers (1 June–31 August) of 1989–98. While previous trajectory climatology studies have been prepared for Summit, the present work considers both the horizontal and vertical components of transport. A three-dimensional residence-time methodology is employed to account for both horizontal and vertical components of transport. the vertical transport component is quantified by passing all trajectories through a three-dimensional grid and tracking the time spent (i.e. the residence time) in each gridcell. This method also allows inspection of trajectory altitude distributions corresponding to transport from upwind regions of interest. the three-dimensional residence-time methodology is shown to be a valuable tool for diagnosing the details of long-range atmospheric transport to remote locations. for Summit, we find that the frequent transport from North America tends to occur at low altitudes, whereas transport from Europe is highly variable. Mean summertime flow patterns are described, as are anomalous patterns during 1990,1996 and 1998.

Marine aerosol source regions to Prince of Wales Icefield, Ellesmere Island, and influence from the tropical Pacific, 1979–2001

“…We utilize residence time analysis [ Miller et al ., ] to identify air mass transport densities for 1979–2001, as position errors of a single air mass back trajectory can be up to 20% of the distance traveled [ Stohl , ]. This probabilistic approach, in which a large number of trajectories are computed and analyzed, is used to reduce uncertainties and derive reliable airflow pathways [e.g., Miller et al ., ].…”

“…We utilize residence time analysis [ Miller et al ., ] to identify air mass transport densities for 1979–2001, as position errors of a single air mass back trajectory can be up to 20% of the distance traveled [ Stohl , ]. This probabilistic approach, in which a large number of trajectories are computed and analyzed, is used to reduce uncertainties and derive reliable airflow pathways [e.g., Miller et al ., ]. This method has been previously used to interpret polar ice core paleoclimate records by elucidating airflow pathways arriving at ice core sites [e.g., Davidson et al ., ; Eneroth et al ., ; Kahl et al ., ; Lim et al ., ; Reijmer et al ., ].…”

Continuous Non-Marine Inputs of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances to the High Arctic: A Multi-Decadal Temporal Record

“…Residence time analysis was used to identify air mass transport densities for 1994 and 2013 (Miller et al, 2002). This approach analyzes a large number of trajectories to reduce uncertainties, develop reliable pathways of airflow and account 15 for variations in transport speed and direction (Criscitiello et al, 2016).…”

Historical black carbon deposition in the Canadian High Arctic: A 190-year long ice-core record from Devon Island

“…Unlike Sharma et al (2006) and Huang et al (2010), however, we did not use trajectory clustering, because results are highly sensitive to the quality and density of meteorological data coverage used in trajectory computations, and to the arrival height of trajectories 20 (i.e., starting point of back-trajectories; Kassomenos et al, 2010;Su et al, 2015). Instead, we computed probability density maps or air parcel residence time from all combined trajectories over an equal area grid with 200 × 200 km resolution, following a methodology analog to that of Miller et al (2002).…”