Identification

Title

Pollution transport from North America to Greenland during summer 2008

Abstract

Ozone pollution transported to the Arctic is a significant concern because of the rapid, enhanced warming in high northern latitudes, which is caused, in part, by short-lived climate forcers, such as ozone. Long-range transport of pollution contributes to background and episodic ozone levels in the Arctic. However, the extent to which plumes are photochemically active during transport, particularly during the summer, is still uncertain. In this study, regional chemical transport model simulations are used to examine photochemical production of ozone in air masses originating from boreal fire and anthropogenic emissions over North America and during their transport toward the Arctic during early July 2008. Model results are evaluated using POLARCAT aircraft data collected over boreal fire source regions in Canada (ARCTAS-B) and several days downwind over Greenland (POLARCAT-France and POLARCAT-GRACE). Model results are generally in good agreement with the observations, except for certain trace gas species over boreal fire regions, in some cases indicating that the fire emissions are too low. Anthropogenic and biomass burning pollution (BB) from North America was rapidly uplifted during transport east and north to Greenland where pollution plumes were observed in the mid- and upper troposphere during POLARCAT. A model sensitivity study shows that CO levels are in better agreement with POLARCAT measurements (fresh and aged fire plumes) upon doubling CO emissions from fires. Analysis of model results, using ΔO₃/ΔCO enhancement ratios, shows that pollution plumes formed ozone during transport towards the Arctic. Fresh anthropogenic plumes have average ΔO₃/ΔCO enhancement ratios of 0.63 increasing to 0.92 for aged anthropogenic plumes, indicating additional ozone production during aging. Fresh fire plumes are only slightly enhanced in ozone (ΔO₃/ΔCO=0.08), but form ozone downwind with ΔO₃/ΔCO of 0.49 for aged BB plumes (model-based run). We estimate that aged anthropogenic and BB pollution together made an important contribution to ozone levels with an average contribution for latitudes >55° N of up to 6.5 ppbv (18%) from anthropogenic pollution and 3 ppbv (5.2%) from fire pollution in the model domain in summer 2008.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7bk1d47

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-04-10T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact