High Arctic snow, ice, and particle samples to investigate dust and black carbon occurrence close to Longyearbyen, Svalbard

Svalbard is one of the hot spots of Arctic Amplification, i.e., fastest warming places on Earth. Most often dust and black carbon (BC, soot) investigations in Svalbard have been carried out in clean remote areas and investigations close to the settlement and coal mines are rare. Therefore, our investigation focused on the vicinity of Mine 5 and Mine 7 (coal mining) and on the Longyearbyen settlement surroundings, as well as on samples collected from a nearby glacier. Dust storms have been observed in Svalbard (e.g., 11 September 2024).

During 22-28 April 2024, the Faculty of Environmental Sciences - Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and University of Arctic (UA) Thematic Network on Nordic Snow Network (established from Nordic Snow Network project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers) organized an educational Polar Winter School (PWS) in Svalbard. Several research and educational activities were carried out. Here we present our work related to dust and black carbon and results from the samples that we collected during the PWS. In the field, the snow surface was often observed visually dark, either due to soot (black) or dust (tones of grey and brown), depending on the location. Dark impurity layers (with ice) were observed and sampled from a deep snowpack nearby the Mine 7. The glacier samples appeared visually clean.

The samples were transported from Svalbard to the laboratory of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Helsinki, Finland, mainly as snow and ice. In Finland, these samples were melted and filtered. Thereafter, the particle and filter samples were investigated with multiple methods for their dust and BC (soot particle) properties at FMI and at the University of Chemistry and Technology (UCT), Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Prague, Czech Republic. For example, our soot samples (loose particle sample no. 7, and quartz filter sample no. 7 from a dirty ice layer close to the Mine 7) particle volume size distributions had a peak at 200 µm, and rectangular, non-spherical shapes (observed using scanning electron microscopy). The presence of C (74.6 Wt%), O (13.2 Wt%), Zr (4.5 Wt%) Fe (4.4 Wt%) and <1 Wt% of Si, S, Al, Ca, Mg, Na and K were detected using SEM/EDS by UCT. In addition to dust and BC results, we demonstrate how to utilize remote sensing observations to better understand our field work environment and our data.

We gratefully acknowledge all the PWS participants, as well as Faculty of Environmental Sciences - Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Science -  University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, UArctic Thematic Networks on High Latitude Dust (HLD) and Nordic Snow Network, Norway grants within EEA funds, Czech Arctic Research Station and Summit Trade.