Aerosol profile measurements in the coastal zone of Antarctica: instrumentation and preliminary results

The IPCC has identified the indirect aerosol effect as the biggest uncertainty in the Earth's climate system. For this reason, efforts are being made to measure aerosols and the associated effect on the climate. Antarctica is often used to reveal changes in the global background. One of the characteristics enabling to separate aerosol of the local origin from the background level is the aerosol vertical profile. A MAX-DOAS technique is among the approaches that can give information on the aerosol vertical distribution. The paper presents instrumentation and preliminary results of aerosol measurements which were conducted in eastern Antarctica, near the Russian station "Progress" (69°22S 76°23E, Larsemann Hills). The aerosol measurements were performed using a MAX-DOAS instrument called MARS-B originally designed by NOMREC of BSU. The MARS-B instrument records spectra of the scattered sunlight in a range of the elevation angles of 0°–90° in the UV and visible range of 341-426 and 416-500 nm with FWHM=0.32 nm. To retrieve aerosol extinction, we used its influence on the optical depth of the collision complex O 2 -O 2 (or O 4 ) of the molecular oxygen O 2 . Aerosol extinction was obtained for the wavelengths of 370 and 458 nm. The MAX-DOAS aerosol measurements were performed in January and February, 2014, and were further compared with Cimel-CE318 solar photometer data for clear days. Features of two data series are discussed in brief.