Lifecycle of Black Carbon in the Arctic

Abstract: This PhD thesis investigates the atmospheric life cycle of Black Carbon (BC) in the Arctic. The Arctic region has been rapidly changing in the last decades and the role of BC aerosols in this is still uncertain. BC aerosols are mainly produced by incomplete combustion of biomass burning and fossil fuel and stand out from other aerosol species due to their strong ability to absorb solar radiation. The impact of BC on the Earth’s radiation budget is estimated to be overall warming. While the indirect effect, interactions with clouds, is estimated to be negative, the direct radiation effect is positive because of the absorption ability of the BC. These estimates are uncertain, especially for aerosol-cloud interactions. To estimate the role of BC in the Arctic, it is necessary to know the size distribution of BC, the transport pattern and the loss processes that affect the BC concentration. In this thesis, in-situ observations from the Zeppelin observatory in the Arctic, as well as global modelling tools, are used to answer the following research questions: 1. What kind of new insights about BC size distributions can be gained from simultaneous long-term measurements of absorption and aerosol number size distributions? 2. How do source regions impact BC size distributions measured at Zeppelin? 3. How are observations of biomass burning tracers at Zeppelin connected to transport from source regions with active fires? 4. How do emissions, as well as, wet and dry removal pathways drive the diversity of the BC life cycle in General Circulation Models (GCMs)?A statistical method to derive BC size distributions from filter-based absorption measurements was developed and applied to long-term data from the Arctic measurement station Zeppelin on Svalbard. Promising results were obtained for inferring BC number size distributions from absorption and size distribution data, except for the most polluted conditions with the air masses arriving from Northern Eurasia and Russia - as identified from an analysis using back trajectories. Trajectory analysis was also used to link events with elevated biomass burning tracers and BC at Zeppelin to fire activity measured by satellites on the continents around the Arctic. To investigate the interplay of emissions and removal processes of BC in models and to understand the diversity in model representation of BC in the Arctic, a detailed analysis of processes in four GCMs was performed. The BC concentrations in the Arctic were compared and their response to removal processes during long-range transport to Zeppelin. The results underline the importance of BC sources and processing far away from the Arctic.The knowledge gained about the BC life cycle will facilitate a better assessment of the large-scale influence of BC on the Arctic climate and environment.