In situ eBC vertical profiles in the Arctic troposphere: a comprehensive analysis of 9 years (2011-2019) of tethered balloons experiments

Primary objective of this long-term research activity is to build a climatology of aerosol vertical profiles in and above the Arctic Boundary Layer. To this aim since 2011 an international research team has performed yearly field campaigns at the Ny-Ålesund super-site (Svalbard isl.) thanks the support of the Italian CNR Arctic station Dirigibile Italia and German AWI Koldway station. Making use various aerosol payloads and tethered balloons systems (TBS) up to date more than 500 aerosol profiles have been recorded in the first km of the Arctic troposphere, providing detailed information on black carbon concentration, aerosol size distribution, aerosol scattering coefficients and chemical composition. Seasonal trends have been obtained for spring, summer, autumn and winter. Case studies has already been reported (1-3) describing the impact of ship emissions, Arctic haze and new particle formation events on the vertical aerosol structure. In situ TBS activities have been often accompanied by parallel lidar profiling (4) and a closure study of aerosol microphysical property retrieval has been recently published on a full chemical aerosol characterization both at bulk level on filter samples and on single particles by scanning electron microscopy (5). The present communication is focused on the full eBC vertical profiles dataset as obtained in the 2011-2019 period with a suite of lightweight instrumentations (AE51, PSAP), and with different tethered balloon systems (see preliminary results in Fig.1). More than 500 profiles have been homogenized, the trends statistically analyzed, and the results compared with ground-based reference monitors at Zeppelin (475 m asl.) and Gruvenbadet (70 m asl) observatories. This work was supported by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and by Norwegian Research Council through the BC-3D SSG grant.