Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerosols".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2023) | Viewed by 8957

Special Issue Editors

College of Atmospheric Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Interests: light-absorbing particles; snow albedo; remote sensing; cryospheric darkening; climate change
State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China
Interests: carbonaceous aerosol; cryospheric chemistry ; tropopause aerosol
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Pure snow has the highest albedo on the natural Earth’s surface, and exerts a cooling effect. However, when light-absorbing particles (LAPs) such as black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC), dust, and algae are deposited on snow, they can significantly alter the optical properties of snow and contribute to positive radiative forcing through increased incident solar irradiance absorption due to the reduction of snow albedo. Our understanding of LAPs in snow mainly comes from limited ground-based observations, model simulations, and remote sensing retrievals, but remains far from complete.

We invite the submission of original research articles and reviews on any aspect of light-absorbing particles in snow and ice, including (but not limited to) physicochemical properties of LAPs in snow, LAPs–snow albedo feedback, etc., and their variations across space and time. We encourage studies using the most recent technology (e.g., remote sensing) to address such issues. Modelling simulation studies that focus on the radiative effects of LAPs in snow on the climate system are equally welcome. We are also interested in studies using in situ observations and reanalysis datasets to address spatial and temporal variabilities of LAPs in snow.

Dr. Wei Pu
Dr. Hewen Niu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • light-absorbing particles
  • snow albedo
  • snow cover
  • remote sensing
  • cryospheric darkening
  • climate change
  • modelling simulations
  • in situ observations

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 6984 KiB  
Article
Gaseous and Particulate Pollution in the Wu-Chang-Shi Urban  Agglomeration on the Northern Slope of Tianshan Mountains from 2017 to 2021
by Zhi Chen, Zhongqin Li, Liping Xu, Xi Zhou, Xin Zhang, Fanglong Wang and Yutian Luo
Atmosphere 2023, 14(1), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14010091 - 31 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1581
Abstract
Rapid social development has led to serious air pollution problems in cities, and air pollutants, including gaseous pollutants and particulate matter, have an important impact on climate, the environment, and human health. This study analyzed the characteristics, potential sources, and causes of air [...] Read more.
Rapid social development has led to serious air pollution problems in cities, and air pollutants, including gaseous pollutants and particulate matter, have an important impact on climate, the environment, and human health. This study analyzed the characteristics, potential sources, and causes of air pollution in the Wu-Chang-Shi urban cluster. The results showed that NO2, CO, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 had a tendency to decrease, while O3 showed an increasing trend. The concentrations of SO2, NO2, CO, PM2.5, and PM10 showed the highest values in winter and the lowest values in summer, with similar seasonal variations. However, the concentration of O3 was highest in the summer and lowest in the winter. Compared with the pollutant concentrations in other Chinese cities, PM2.5, PM10, and NO2 are more polluted in the Wu-Chang-Shi urban. Meteorological factors have a greater impact on pollutant concentrations, with higher concentrations of major pollutants observed when wind speeds are low and specific wind directions are observed, and higher secondary pollutant O3 concentrations observed when wind speeds are low and specific wind directions are observed. The backward trajectory and concentration weighting analysis show that the particulate pollutants in the Wu-Chang-Shi urban in winter mainly come from Central Asia and surrounding cities. O3 showed an increasing trend before and after the novel coronavirus outbreak, which may be related to changes in NOX, volatile organic compounds, and solar radiation intensity, and the concentrations of SO2, NO2, CO, PM10, and PM2.5 showed an overall decreasing trend after the outbreak and was smaller than before the outbreak, which is related to the reduction of industrial and anthropogenic source emissions during the outbreak. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice)
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13 pages, 4440 KiB  
Article
Historical Changes of Black Carbon in Snow and Its Radiative Forcing in CMIP6 Models
by Yang Chen, Xuejing Li, Yuxuan Xing, Shirui Yan, Dongyou Wu, Tenglong Shi, Jiecan Cui, Xueying Zhang and Xiaoying Niu
Atmosphere 2022, 13(11), 1774; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13111774 - 28 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1904
Abstract
Black carbon in snow (BCS) has a significant impact on global climate and is an important component of Earth system modeling. Here, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of BCS simulations in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and its radiative forcing [...] Read more.
Black carbon in snow (BCS) has a significant impact on global climate and is an important component of Earth system modeling. Here, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of BCS simulations in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and its radiative forcing on a global scale. Overall, the multi-model mean generally captures the characteristics of BCS spatial patterns, with maximum concentrations in East Asia and the Tibetan Plateau (~120 ng·g−1), and the lowest in Antarctica (~0.05 ng·g−1). The BCS concentrations in all CMIP6 multi-model mean and individual models generally exhibit a temporally increasing trend globally, with particularly large increases after the 1940s. In terms of seasonal cycles, individual models are generally consistent in most regions. Globally, BCS concentrations are highest around January and lowest in September. The albedo reduction in the Tibetan Plateau and East Asia simulated by the CMIP6 multi-model mean reached ~0.06 in 2014 and may influence climate more than expected. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice)
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17 pages, 4316 KiB  
Article
Influence of Particulate Matter on the Albedo of Qiangtang No. 1 Glacier, Tibetan Plateau
by Tianli Xu, Guangjian Wu, Zhengliang Yu, Yifan Pan, Sen Li and Ni Yan
Atmosphere 2022, 13(10), 1618; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13101618 - 4 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1605
Abstract
The melting behavior of glaciers on and around the Tibetan Plateau is strongly influenced by their albedo. In this paper, we report continuous observations made on the Qiangtang (QT) No. 1 Glacier, located in the central Tibetan Plateau, during its 2013–2015 melting seasons. [...] Read more.
The melting behavior of glaciers on and around the Tibetan Plateau is strongly influenced by their albedo. In this paper, we report continuous observations made on the Qiangtang (QT) No. 1 Glacier, located in the central Tibetan Plateau, during its 2013–2015 melting seasons. Surface snow on the QT No. 1 Glacier mainly had a dust content less than 600 ppm and a black carbon (BC) content less than 10 ppb. A strong negative correlation was observed between albedo and dust content up to a threshold concentration of 1000 ppm, although albedo remained constant when dust concentrations increased above this value. The radii of snow particles showed a log-normal distribution that had a mean value of ~500 μm, but maximum and minimum values of 2539 μm and 40 μm, respectively. Snow density showed a normal distribution with a total range of 193–555 kg/m3, although most snow had a density of 400 kg/m3. Snow, ice, and aerosol radiative (SNICAR) simulations showed that dust and BC in the surface snow of the QT No. 1 Glacier reduced the snow and ice albedo by 5.9% and 0.06%, respectively, during the ablation season in 2015; however, the simulated particle impact was greater than the albedo reduction measured from field data. We interpret that dust has played a significantly more important role in melting of the QT No. 1 Glacier than BC over the study period, which is mainly due to the scarcity of human activities in the region and the low concentration of BC being produced. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice)
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12 pages, 1970 KiB  
Article
The Light Absorption Heating Method for Measurement of Light Absorption by Particles Collected on Filters
by Carl G. Schmitt, Martin Schnaiter, Claudia Linke and W. Patrick Arnott
Atmosphere 2022, 13(5), 824; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13050824 - 18 May 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2314
Abstract
A new instrument for the quantification of light absorption by particles collected on filters has been developed to address long standing environmental questions about light-absorbing particles in air, water, and on snow and ice. The Light Absorption Heating Method (LAHM) uses temperature changes [...] Read more.
A new instrument for the quantification of light absorption by particles collected on filters has been developed to address long standing environmental questions about light-absorbing particles in air, water, and on snow and ice. The Light Absorption Heating Method (LAHM) uses temperature changes when filters are exposed to light to quantify absorption. Through the use of calibration standards, the observed temperature response of unknown materials can be related to the absorption cross section of the substance collected on the filter. Here, we present a detailed description of the instrument and calibration. The results of the calibration tests using a common surrogate for black carbon, Fullerene soot, show that the instrument provides stable results even when exposed to adverse laboratory conditions, and that there is little drift in the instrument over longer periods of time. Calibration studies using Fullerene soot suspended in water, airborne propane soot, as well as atmospheric particulates show consistent results for absorption cross section when using accepted values for the mass absorption cross section of the soot and when compared to results from a 3-wavelength photoacoustic instrument. While filter sampling cannot provide the time resolution of other instrumentation, the LAHM instrument fills a niche where time averaging is reasonable and high-cost instrumentation is not available. The optimal range of absorption cross sections for LAHM is from 0.1 to 5.0 cm2 (~1.0–50.0 µg soot) for 25 mm filters and 0.4 to 20 cm2 (4.0–200.0 µg soot) for 47 mm filters, with reduced sensitivity to higher values. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Light-Absorbing Particles in Snow and Ice)
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