The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) mission during 2008 as a part of the International Polar Year (IPY). The purpose of ARCTAS was to study the factors responsible for changes in the Arctic's atmospheric composition and climate. A major emphasis was to investigate Arctic haze, which is most pronounced during winter and early spring. This study focuses on the spring phase of ARCTAS (ARCTAS-A) that was based in Alaska during April 2008. Although anthropogenic emissions historically have been associated with Arctic haze, biomass burning emissions dominated the ARCTAS-A period and have been the focus of many ARCTAS related studies. This study determines mean transport characteristics of anthropogenic emissions during ARCTAS-A. Trajectories are initiated each day from three significant regions of anthropogenic emissions (Asia, North America, and Europe). The fifteen day forward trajectories are calculated using data from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 45 km horizontal resolution. The trajectory calculations indicate: origins of emissions that reach the Arctic (defined as north of 70 N) within fifteen days, pathways of these emissions, Arctic entry locations, and altitudes at which the trajectories enter the Arctic. Three cases during the ARCTAS-A period (one for each of the regions above) are examined using backward trajectories and chemical fingerprinting based on in situ data sampled from the NASA DC-8. The fingerprinting utilizes volatile organic compounds that represent pure anthropogenic tracers, Asian anthropogenic pollution, incomplete combustion, and natural gas emissions. We determine flight legs containing anthropogenic emissions and the pathways travelled by these emissions. Results show that the DC-8 sampled anthropogenic emissions from Asia, North America, and Europe during the spring phase of ARCTAS. The pathways travelled by these emissions agree with our derived transport characteristics and previous studies of Arctic transport. Meteorological analysis and trajectory calculations indicate that middle latitude cyclones and their associated warm conveyor belts play an important role in lofting the surface based emissions to their sampling altitude in all three cases. © 2011 Author(s).

We determine enhancement ratios for NOx, PAN, and other NO y species from boreal biomass burning using aircraft data obtained during the ARCTAS-B campaign and examine the impact of these emissions on tropospheric ozone in the Arctic. We find an initial emission factor for NO x of 1.06 g NO per kg dry matter (DM) burned, much lower than previous observations of boreal plumes, and also one third the value recommended for extratropical fires. Our analysis provides the first observational confirmation of rapid PAN formation in a boreal smoke plume, with 40% of the initial NOx emissions being converted to PAN in the first few hours after emission. We find little clear evidence for ozone formation in the boreal smoke plumes during ARCTAS-B in either aircraft or satellite observations, or in model simulations. Only a third of the smoke plumes observed by the NASA DC8 showed a correlation between ozone and CO, and ozone was depleted in the plumes as often as it was enhanced. Special observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) also show little evidence for enhanced ozone in boreal smoke plumes between 15 June and 15 July 2008. Of the 22 plumes observed by TES, only 4 showed ozone increasing within the smoke plumes, and even in those cases it was unclear that the increase was caused by fire emissions. Using the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry model, we show that boreal fires during ARCTAS-B had little impact on the median ozone profile measured over Canada, and had little impact on ozone within the smoke plumes observed by TES. © 2010 Author(s).