2016 Barrow Field Study

03-23-2016

Since late February, Angela has been in Barrow, AK studying the flux of halogens from the Arctic snowpack. You can read about our adventures from February 21th, 2016 – April 25, 2016 on graduate student Angela Raso’s Blog - http://snowkidding.blogspot.com/

Here is a brief synopsis of the project:

During the spring in both the Arctic and Antarctic ozone concentrations go through periodic depletion events, where concentrations of ozone go from northern hemispheric background levels of ~30ppb to near 0ppb over the course of several hours. These ozone depletion events (ODEs) are of great intrest because of ozone’s influence on oxidation and cleaning the atmosphere. Halogens, especially bromine, is believed to be the cause of these events. Bromine and other halogens are believed to be produced via photochemistry in salty coastal snow. However, the magnitude of halogen production from the snowpack has not been well defined. In this project we will measure the flux of both bromine and chlorine from the snowpack near Barrow Alaska using the eddy co-variance method. Additionally, a 10m tall tower has been erected to examine the stability and mixing of the halogens from the snowpack into the atmosphere.

This project is a collaboration with the micrometeorology group at Penn State (http://www.micromet.psu.edu/) and the Pratt lab a University of Michigan (http://prattlab.chem.lsa.umich.edu/)