Identification

Title

Impacts of coal dust from an active mine on the spectral reflectance of Arctic surface snow in Svalbard, Norway

Abstract

Light-absorbing particles (LAPs) in snow such as dust and black carbon influence the radiative forcing at the Earth's surface, which has major implications for global climate models. LAPs also significantly influence the melting of glaciers, sea ice, and seasonal snow. Here we present an in situ study of surface snow near an active coal mine in the Norwegian Arctic. We couple measurements of spectral hemispherical directional reflectance factor (HDRF) with measurements of LAPs characterized in two ways, as refractory black carbon using a Single Particle Soot Photometer and the total light absorption of LAPs measured with the Light Absorption Heating Method. The Snow Ice and Aerosol Radiation model was constrained by LAP measurements. Results were compared to observed spectral albedo measurements. Modeled and observed albedos were similar at the cleaner and more remote sites. However, the modeled spectral albedos do not fully account for the low spectral albedo measured next to the mine. LAP measurements also showed a large variation in particle sizes (tenths to tens of microns) related to transport distance of the particles from the mine. Here we find that LAPs from coal dust reduce the spectral HDRF by up to 84% next to the mine and 55% 0.5 km downwind of the mine. The coupling of extreme LAP observations (1 ng g(-1) to 4863 ng g(-1)) with HDRF measurements from 350 to 2500nm has facilitated the development of spectral band pairs, which could be used in the future to remotely assess LAPs in Arctic snow.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d78917pz

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

2017-02-16T00:00:00Z

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