In the atmosphere, atmospheric particles are acting as short-lived climate forcers and are assumed to be responsible for a part of the climate changes observed worldwide. In the Arctic, a large fraction of observed aerosols is long-range transported especially in late winter and early spring (Arctic haze).

As atmospheric particles serve as cloud and ice nuclei for the formation of clouds, their respective potential to contribute to climate change in the high Arctic is of high relevance. The abundance of bioaerosols in the high Arctic is of special interest as e.g. bacteria are estimated to have a unique contribution to ice clouds. Bacteria have been observed in Arctic areas, but still the overall knowledge on their specific properties is very limited.

The project aims at measuring the cloud- and haze- forming potential of aerosols at Villum Research Station (VRS) now with the use of online instrumentation which is available compared to the offline techniques applied at VRS in 2015 (in ARC campaign, master thesis under progress). Additionally, we aim to continue the biological sampling of aerosols as we want to further investigate the type of bioaerosols, which are observed in the high Arctic and make efforts to investigate their ice-nucleating potential in the lab. This project will highly profit from the experiences gained in spring 2015.

Field Site: Villum Research Station, Station Nord, Greenlnad

PI: Andreas Massling

Link to Isaaffik website