Calculated radiative effects of Arctic haze during a pollution episode in Spring 1983 based on ground-based and airborne measurements

Abstract In March 1983 a combined ground-based and aircraft campaign was conducted in the Svalbard (Spitsbergen) area. Aerosol mass size distributions and their scattering and absorption properties were measured at Ny-Alesund. Vertical extinction profiles and horizontal extension of haze layers were recorded with a Lidar system on board of the German research plane ‘ Falcon ’. The concentration of soot particles and its vertical variation were determined for different synoptic conditions by passive sampling with the aircraft and subsequent laboratory analysis. In the cases with anticyclonic conditions the major part of the soot seems to be concentrated within the layer below the inversion extending to altitudes of about 500 m. In the case of well-mixed maritime airmasses there is only a small variation of soot concentration from ground level up to 3 km altitude. The measured aerosol optical properties were used to calculate the effects of Arctic haze layers on the solar radiation budget of the troposphere employing the matrix operator method for solving the radiative transfer equations.