1,2,2,1- 1Department of Meteorology (MISU), Stockholm University / Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm, Sweden (andreas.plach@misu.su.se)
- 2Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Kjeller, Norway
Arctic Amplification is not well understood. It is the result of a complicated interplay between remote and local forcing and feedback processes. Therefore, it is crucial to enhance our understanding of the transport of energy and moisture from lower latitudes. The amount of aerosol in the Arctic is also an important quantity as their role in Arctic Amplification, via direct radiative forcing and aerosol-cloud interactions, remain poorly quantified.
In this work, we aim to better quantify how aerosols, energy, and moisture are transported to and distributed within the Arctic. We investigate observations at Arctic stations, including, Villum and Zeppelin, and perform backward-in-time simulations with the Lagrangian atmospheric transport model FLEXPART (Pisso et al., 2019; Bakels et al., 2024) to derive so-called emission sensitivities and use these sensitivities to better quantify source regions of aerosols, energy, and moisture.
In general, we aim to better describe the spatial and temporal atmospheric transport characteristics into the Arctic and how these characteristics have changed in recent years. We focus on the transport during warm-air intrusions, since almost 30% of the total poleward transport of moisture (during winter) occurs during such events (Woods et al., 2013). Warm-air intrusions are often associated with large-scale atmospheric blocking patterns forcing a change in transport direction from east to more poleward, bringing warm, moist, and cloudy air into the Arctic. Warm-air intrusions can also be favourable for an enhanced transport of aerosols (e.g., Dada et al., 2022).
Since climate models show large biases in moisture flux during these events (Woods et al., 2017), there is clearly a need to better quantify the transport of moisture, energy, and aerosols during these events. This will also help to provide better forcing for climate simulations.
Bakels et al. (2024): 10.5194/gmd-17-7595-2024; Dada et al. (2022): 10.1038/s41467-022-32872-2; Lapere et al. (2024): 10.1029/2023JD039606; Pisso et al. (2019): 10.5194/gmd-12-4955-2019; Woods et al. (2013): 10.1002/grl.50912; Woods et al. (2017): 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0710.1
How to cite: Plach, A., Eckhardt, S., Evangeliou, N., and Ekman, A. M. L.: Atmospheric transport characteristics during warm-air intrusions – focusing on aerosol, energy, and moisture transport, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12413, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12413, 2026.
