Current and Future Arctic Aerosols and Ozone From Remote Emissions and Emerging Local Sources—Modeled Source Contributions and Radiative Effects

Abstract

The Arctic is influenced by air pollution transported from lower latitudes, and increasingly by local sources such as shipping and resource extraction. Local Arctic emissions could increase significantly in the future due to industrialization in a warming Arctic and further influence Arctic climate. We use the regional model Weather Research and Forecasting, including chemistry, to investigate current (2012) and future (2050) sources of Arctic aerosol and ozone pollution and their radiative impacts, focusing on spring and summer emissions from midlatitude anthropogenic sources, biomass burning, Arctic shipping, and Arctic gas flaring. Results show that remote anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions are likely to remain the main source of Arctic pollution burdens and of black carbon (BC) deposition over snow, and the main contributors to direct aerosol and ozone radiative effects in the Arctic. However, local Arctic flaring emissions are already a major source of BC in northwestern Russia, with a direct radiative effect of ∼25 mW/m2, and Arctic shipping is a strong current source of aerosols and ozone during summer in the Nordic Seas. We find that the direct effect of ozone and aerosols from summertime Arctic shipping is respectively negative (due to frequent temperature inversions) and positive (because of the high surface albedo) in our simulations, two new results. With the development of diversion shipping through the Arctic Ocean in summer 2050, Arctic shipping emissions could become the main source of surface aerosol and ozone pollution at the surface, with strong associated indirect effects of −0.8 W/m2, while flaring would remain an important BC source.

Overview: Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments (iCUPE) – concept and initial results

“…These relations were applied in the validation of ice cloud and precipitation retrieval algorithms. For example, the performance of the "unified" algorithm, which combines the radar and lidar observations of EarthCARE in a variety of snowfall conditions (Moisseev et al, 2017;Li et al, 2018), was tested using snowfall data as shown in Mason et al (2018Mason et al ( , 2019. Using these studies showed that the measurements collected at Hyytiälä, namely combined observations of surface snowfall observations and multifrequency radar observations, show the potential for verification of satellite cloud and precipitation retrieval algorithms in the future.…”

Chemical composition and source attribution of submicron aerosol particles in the summertime Arctic lower troposphere

“…Together, these results indicate the important role of mid-latitude aerosol sources on summertime Arctic particle composition in the lower FT. Particularly, contributions from biomass burning emissions on summertime Arctic aerosol are likely to increase under scenarios for the future climate (e.g., Randerson et al, 2006;de Groot et al, 2013;Marelle et al, 2018;Evangeliou et al, 2019). To our knowledge, this is the first study providing comprehensive particle chemical composition analysis in the summertime Arctic FT, by using two complementary aerosol mass spectrometers with black carbon measurements from an SP2.…”

Space‐Based Observations for Understanding Changes in the Arctic‐Boreal Zone

“…There may be an increase in future pollution emissions within the ABZ given the likely increase in wildfires, agricultural fires, and anthropogenic activities (e.g., shipping, oil and natural gas extraction, fishing) in the warmer and increasingly accessible ABZ (e.g., Arnold et al, ; Corbett et al, ; Gong et al, ; Hegg et al, ; Law et al, ; Marelle et al, ; McKuin & Campbell, ; Peters et al, ; Schmale et al, ). There are several international efforts that have as part of their design to observe these changes.…”