Occurrence of weak, sub‐micron, tropospheric aerosol events at high Arctic latitudes

Abstract

Numerous fine mode (sub‐micron) aerosol optical events were observed during the summer of 2007 at the High Arctic atmospheric observatory (PEARL) located at Eureka, Nunavut, Canada. Half of these events could be traced to forest fires in southern and eastern Russia and the Northwest Territories of Canada. The most notable findings were that (a) a combination of ground‐based measurements (passive sunphotometry, high spectral resolution lidar) could be employed to determine that weak (near sub‐visual) fine mode events had occurred, and (b) this data combined with remote sensing imagery products (MODIS, OMI‐AI, FLAMBE fire sources), Fourier transform spectroscopy and back trajectories could be employed to identify the smoke events.