IS THE ARCTIC SUBJECT TO INCREASING ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS IN THE SUMMER SEASON?

Over the past 30 years, the Arctic region has been the subject of extensive international studies focused on elucidating the transport pathways of pollution into the Arctic. Due to the lack of significant local anthropogenic aerosol sources, the extremely sensitive ecosystem of the Arctic is mostly affected by aerosols and pollution transported through atmospheric circulation, mainly through influencing the Arctic surface radiation budget. The increasing scientific interest in feedback mechanisms related to climate change has led to a solid scientific foundation for investigations of climate change related environmental adaptations currently observed in the Arctic. In this work we present examples of three different extreme aerosol events which had significant impact on the radiative budget in the Svalbard region. We show that in the last 5 years summer biomass burning events are beginning to play a very important role in aerosol related pollution in the Svalbard region. In 2006, the European Arctic experienced an abnormally warm spring, and smoke from agricultural fires in Eastern Europe was intruded into the region causing severe air pollution episodes. Two significant volcanic eruptions, i.e. the Eyjafjallajökull (April-May 2010) and Grímsvötn (May 2011) eruptions produced layers of high aerosol concentration, which have been observed over Svalbard several days after the eruptions. The third aerosol event involves the biomass burning episode related to intense forest fires in North America in July 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]