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The Asian summer monsoon is linked to deep convection over the Indian subcontinent and to an anticyclonic flow that extends from the upper troposphere into the lower stratosphere region. This allows both gas-phase aerosol precursors and aerosol particles from surface sources to reach the stratosphere. The horizontal transport out of the Asian monsoon anticyclone towards the extratropical lower stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere is the focus of this study. We present an annual record of Lidar observations at AWIPEV in Ny-Ålesund. The data record is free from obvious layers like polar stratospheric clouds, volcanic eruptions or forest fires. Nevertheless, the lower stratosphere reveals an annual cycle with lower backscatter values in winter and spring and higher backscatter values in summer and autumn. The Lidar measurements have been linked to backward trajectory calculations and simulations of artificial surface origin tracers with the three-dimensional Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS). The simulations show that air masses observed above Ny-Ålesund have been transported from surface sources in Asia into the Arctic lower stratosphere. Thus, the increased backscatter values during summer and autumn can be explained by transport of aerosol particles from the Asian summer monsoon into the Arctic lower stratosphere.

An Nd:YAG-based Raman lidar provides a mature technology to derive profiles of the optical properties of aerosols over a wide altitude range. However, the derivation of micro-physical parameters is an ill-posed problem. Hence, increasing the information content of lidar data is desirable. Recently, ceilometers and wind lidar systems, both operating in the near-infrared region, have been successfully employed in aerosol research. In this study, we demonstrate that the inclusion of additional backscatter coefficients from these two latter instruments clearly improves the inversion of micro-physical parameters such as volume distribution function, effective radius, or single-scattering albedo. We focus on the Arctic aerosol and start with the typical volume distribution functions of Arctic haze and boreal biomass burning. We forward calculate the optical coefficients that the lidar systems should have seen and include or exclude the backscatter coefficients of the ceilometer (910 nm) and wind lidar data (1500 nm) to analyze the value of these wavelengths in their ability to reproduce the volume distribution function, which may be mono- or bimodal. We found that not only the coarse mode but also the properties of the accumulation mode improved when the additional wavelengths were considered. Generally, the 1500 nm wavelength has greater value in correctly reproducing the aerosol properties

In this work we present windlidar data for the research village Ny-Ålesund located on Svalbard in the European Arctic (78.923°N, 11.928°E) from 2013 to 2021. The data have a resolution of 50 m and 10 min with an overlapping height of about 150 m. The maximum range depends on the meteorologic situation. Up to 1000 m altitude the data availability is better than 71%. We found that the highest wind speeds occur in November and December, the lowest ones in June and July, up to 500 m altitude the wind is channelled strongly in ESE to NW direction parallel to the fjord axis and the synoptic conditions above 1000 m altitude already dominate. While the fraction of windy days (v>10m/s) varies significantly from month to month, there is no overall trend of the wind visible in our data set. We define gusts and jets by the requirement of wind maxima v>2m/s above and below a wind maximum. In total, more than 24,000 of these events were identified (corresponding to 6% of the time), of which 223 lasted for at least 100 min (“Long Jets”). All of these events are fairly equally distributed over the months relatively to the available data. Further, gusts and jets follow different distributions (in terms of altitude or depths) and occur more frequently for synoptic flow from roughly a southerly direction. Jets do not show a clear correlation between occurrence and synoptic flow. Gusts and jets are not related to cloud cover. We conclude that the atmosphere from 400 m to 1000 m above Ny-Ålesund is dominated by a turbulent wind shear zone, which connects the micrometeorology in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) with the synoptic flow.

Biomass burning related aerosol episodes are becoming a serious threat to the radiative balance of the Arctic region. Since early July 2017 intense wildfires were recorded between August and September in Canada and Greenland, covering an area up to 4674 km2 in size. This paper describes the impact of these biomass burning (BB) events measured over Svalbard, using an ensemble of ground-based, columnar, and vertically-resolved techniques. BB influenced the aerosol chemistry via nitrates and oxalates, which exhibited an increase in their concentrations in all of size fractions, indicating the BB origin of particles. The absorption coefficient data (530 nm) at ground reached values up to 0.6 Mm-1, highlighting the impact of these BB events when compared to average Arctic background values, which do not exceed 0.05 Mm-1. The absorption behavior is fundamental as implies a subsequent atmospheric heating. At the same time, the AERONET Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data showed high values at stations located close to or in Canada (AOD over 2.0). Similarly, increased values of AODs were then observed in Svalbard, e.g., in Hornsund (daily average AODs exceeded 0.14 and reached hourly values up to 0.5). Elevated values of AODs were then registered in Sodankyla and Andenes (daily average AODs exceeding 0.150) a few days after the Svalbard observation of the event highlighting the BB columnar magnitude, which is crucial for the radiative impact. All the reported data suggest to rank the summer 2017 plume of aerosols as one of the biggest atmosphere related environmental problems over Svalbard region in last 10 years.

Biomass burning related aerosol episodes are becoming a serious threat to the radiative balance of the Arctic region. Since early July 2017 intense wildfires were recorded between August and September in Canada and Greenland, covering an area up to 4674 km2 in size. This paper describes the impact of these biomass burning (BB) events measured over Svalbard, using an ensemble of ground-based, columnar, and vertically-resolved techniques. BB influenced the aerosol chemistry via nitrates and oxalates, which exhibited an increase in their concentrations in all of size fractions, indicating the BB origin of particles. The absorption coefficient data (530 nm) at ground reached values up to 0.6 Mm–1, highlighting the impact of these BB events when compared to average Arctic background values, which do not exceed 0.05 Mm–1. The absorption behavior is fundamental as implies a subsequent atmospheric heating. At the same time, the AERONET Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data showed high values at stations located close to or in Canada (AOD over 2.0). Similarly, increased values of AODs were then observed in Svalbard, e.g., in Hornsund (daily average AODs exceeded 0.14 and reached hourly values up to 0.5). Elevated values of AODs were then registered in Sodankylä and Andenes (daily average AODs exceeding 0.150) a few days after the Svalbard observation of the event highlighting the BB columnar magnitude, which is crucial for the radiative impact. All the reported data suggest to rank the summer 2017 plume of aerosols as one of the biggest atmosphere related environmental problems over Svalbard region in last 10 years

On the basis of sun photometer measurements located at the German-French polar research base AWIPEV in Ny-Ålesund ( 78.923 ∘ 78.923° N, 11.928 ∘ 11.928° E), Svalbard, long-term changes (2001–2017) of aerosol properties in the European Arctic are analyzed with the main focus on physical aerosol properties like Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and the Ångström exponent during the Arctic haze season in spring compared with summer and autumn months. In order to gain more information from the photometer data and to reduce the error of fitting the data to the Ångström law, a new approach with an Ångström exponent, which depends linearly on wavelength, is presented in this paper. With the Mie program of libRadtran, a calculator for long- and short-wave radiation through the Earth’s atmosphere, artificial aerosol size distributions were created to extend the physical understanding of this modified Ångström law. Monthly means of the measured AOD of the years 1994–2017 are presented to analyze long-term changes of aerosol properties and its load. Because photometer data in general have no height information, a comparison with a Lidar located at the same site is presented. The so-obtained data are then compared with the previous Mie calculus. More homogeneous aerosol properties were found during spring and more heterogeneous in summer. To study possible aerosol sources and sinks, five-day back-trajectories were calculated with the FLEXPART model at three different arriving heights at 11 UTC in the village Ny-Ålesund. Besides the pollution pathway of the aerosol into the European Arctic based on the calculated back-trajectories, the influence of the boundary layer parameterized by the lowermost 100 hPa atmospheric layer is analyzed and compared to the measured aerosol load by the photometer in Ny-Ålesund additionally. During spring, the open ocean acts as a sink for aerosols, whereas sea ice clearly reduces their sinks. Hence, trajectories over sea ice are correlated to higher aeros