Asian Emissions Explain Much of the Arctic Black Carbon Events

Abstract

There is ample evidence that Black Carbon (BC) is harmful to the Arctic. BC can darken the otherwise highly reflective surfaces of snow and ice and increase atmospheric and ice surface temperatures. Because of the importance of BC to the Arctic, this work was designed to resolve the most significant source regions of Arctic BC as measured by monitoring stations in the Arctic. Using a bottom-up approach, it is shown for the first time that there is one particular BC transport pathway from lower latitudes into the Arctic that registers at all but one of the Arctic surface monitoring stations included in this study. Through this pathway, pollutants are transported from the Indo-Gangetic plane over Central Asia into the high Arctic in as little as 7 days. The measurement sites and BC pathways in this study are shown to be well representative of the Arctic as a whole.