Effect of seasonal mesoscale and microscale meteorological conditions in Ny-Ålesund on results of monitoring of long-range transported pollution

ABSTRACT

Ny-Ålesund is an international research settlement where the thermodynamics and chemical composition of the air are monitored. The present work investigates the effects of micrometeorological conditions, mesoscale dynamics and local air pollution on the data collected at two different locations around the village. Daily filter measurements of sulphur dioxide and non-sea salt sulphate from the temporary Ny-Ålesund station and permanent Zeppelin mountain station have been analysed along with meteorological data. The influence of different factors representing micrometeorological phenomena and local pollution from ships has been statistically investigated. Seasonal variation of the correlation between the data from Ny-Ålesund and Zeppelin stations is revealed, and the seasonal dependence of the relative contribution of different factors has been analysed. The median concentrations of SO₄^2- measured in Ny-Ålesund increased significantly on days with temperature inversions in winter. In spring, concentrations of SO₂ and SO₄^2- were higher than normal at both stations on days with temperature inversions, but lower on days with strong humidity inversions. In summer, local ship traffic affects the SO₂ data set from Ny-Ålesund, while no statistically significant influence on the Zeppelin data set has been observed. The pollution from ships has an effect on SO₄^2- values at both stations; however, the concentrations in Ny-Ålesund were higher when local pollution accumulated close to the ground in days with strong humidity inversions.

KEYWORDS:

• Micrometeorology
• air pollution
• Arctic haze
• atmospheric inversion
• aerosol
• sulphate

ABBREVIATIONS:

• ABL: atmospheric boundary layer
• DMS: dimethyl sulphide
• WRS: Wilcoxon rank sum

Acknowledgements

The Norwegian Polar Institute is acknowledged for the detailed map of Svalbard available at http://svalbardkartet.npolar.no. Special thanks are given to the Norwegian Polar Institute for the support and coordination of research activities in Ny-Ålesund, which become a basis for this paper. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is acknowledged for data from the ERA-Interim global atmospheric reanalysis data set used in the present work. Dr Kåre Edvardsen is thanked for reviewing this manuscript. The authors would like to thank Dr John J. Cassano and two anonymous reviewers for thorough reading of the manuscript, constructive comments and suggestions, which helped to improve the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The filter sample measurements were done within the framework of the project Monitoring of Local Air Quality in Ny-Ålesund 2008-2010, supported by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the Svalbard Environmental Protection Fund. The authors also gratefully acknowledge support for the Ny-Ålesund radiosonde data from the Transregional Collaborative Research Center (TR 172), specifically the project Arctic Amplification: Climate Relevant Atmospheric and Surface Processes, and Feedback Mechanisms (AC)3, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).