Is the summer aerosol over the Arctic controlled by regional atmospheric circulation or ice conditions? Trends and future implications

Leck, Caroline; Heintzenberg, Jost; Nygård, Tiina; Naakka, Tuomas

doi:10.5194/acp-25-16775-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-16775-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-16775-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 22

Research article

|

25 Nov 2025

Research article |

| 25 Nov 2025

Is the summer aerosol over the Arctic controlled by regional atmospheric circulation or ice conditions? Trends and future implications

Caroline Leck, Jost Heintzenberg, Tiina Nygård, and Tuomas Naakka

Data sets

Aerosol particle number size distribution data collected during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition L. Karlsson and P. Zieger https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-ao-2018-aerosol-dmps-1

Concentration of particles larger than 2.5 nm collected during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition A. Baccarini et al. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-ao-2018-aerosol-ucpc-1

Short summary

Five summer cruises of the Swedish icebreaker Oden in the inner Arctic in 1990, 1996, 2001, 2008, and 2018 provided a unique dataset on the seasonal distribution of atmospheric aerosol. Coupling these data with the seasonal sea ice distribution strongly indicated a regional biogenic aerosol source during late summer and early autumn freeze-up conditions. Given the expected further warming of the Arctic, we hypothesize an increase in biogenic aerosol in late summer and autumn.