Springtime observations of black carbon aerosols in and outside of low-level Arctic clouds

Few expeditions have ventured into the Arctic to observe the processes that take place in the transition from winter to summer. Particularly, direct observations of aerosol-cloud interactions are scarce, and comprise a large source of uncertainty in radiative forcing estimations in the Arctic.

Light absorbing aerosol particles, such as black carbon (BC) from incomplete combustion, exert a positive forcing upon direct absorption of sunlight, and affect clouds by serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). During the icebreaker expedition ARTofMELT in spring 2023, we measured BC with a multi-angle absorption photometer (MAAP) and a single particle soot photometer (SP2) for five weeks. The two instruments differ by principle and can be used to inform on complementary aspects of the light absorbing aerosol. For example, the MAAP provides the total mass concentrations of so-called equivalent BC (eBC), whereas the single particle instrument SP2 determines the mass of individual refractory BC (rBC) aggregates. Most of the time, the MAAP and SP2 sampled the total BC concentration on the same inlet (whole-air). However, during cloud-events, the SP2 measured downstream of a counterflow virtual impactor (CVI) inlet that samples just cloud droplets or ice crystals without the interstitial or non-activated aerosol.

Our first results indicate overall low out-of-cloud BC mass concentrations for both instruments (median and interquartile range, IQR: 4.4 (1.6-8.5) ngm^-3 for the MAAP and 2.5 (1.2-4.7) ngm^-3 for the SP2). The variation in mass concentration was small, although the tendency of a gradual decrease was observed towards the onset of the melt.

The SP2 instrument enables studies of the BC mass size distribution. For example, during a cloud event we observed that the geometric mean diameter (GMD, mass equivalent diameter) shifted from smaller (171 nm, whole-air inlet) to larger sizes (175-192 nm), as the SP2 switched to sampling the cloud-residual BC (CVI inlet). Further investigation is needed to examine the underlying causes for this observation (e.g. variation in airmass origin). 

The total aerosol concentration is influenced by local natural sources and production from gaseous precursors, as opposed to the BC concentration which is mainly affected by anthropogenic activities. BC source footprints from the Lagrangian dispersion model FLEXPART, indicate little influence from industrialized regions during the whole campaign. This may explain the comparably low median concentration of rBC-particles (1.1 cm^-3, IQR: 0.5-2.1) to the total aerosol number concentration (in the range ~20-150 cm^-3).