It’s summer, but in the Arctic that translates to temperatures around 0 degrees Celsius, rather than sunbathing weather. Nonetheless, you’ll hear no complaints from chemists Jonathan Abbatt and Jennifer Murphy, and their graduate students, who spent a slice of July and August surrounded by sea ice as they studied the chemical processes involved in atmospheric change at the molecular level.
“It is incredible to be in a place that I have read so much about and experience the reality of it,” said Greg Wentworth, a U of T PhD student working with Murphy in environmental and atmospheric chemistry. This summer, he is based aboard the Canadian Coast Guard’s research icebreaker, the CCGS Amundsen.
Abbatt, the principal investigator, and his colleagues and students are undertaking a five-year, $5 million research project called Network on Climate and Aerosols (NETCARE). This summer, U of T researchers are examining aerosols, particles that occur in the atmosphere, to determine what impact they might have on the Arctic climate.
Aerosols come from natural sources, such as sea spray, and from human-made pollutants, such as black carbon or soot. They are the nuclei for cloud formation, and clouds affect the climate. By determining which aerosols are in the Arctic atmosphere and how the ocean promotes formation of these particles, Abbatt and fellow researchers can improve environmental models. Sea ice is already less prevalent than it once was in the far north, due to warming, but it is not clear how more open ocean and more first-year sea ice will affect the atmosphere.
“We want to have a better scientific understanding of how the ocean impacts aerosols which impact cloud formation which can impact climate,” said Abbatt. “Our hope is that our data will lead to improved climate models that can make predictions about what the Arctic climate will be like in future.
“These measurements will contribute to the information about how natural systems are responding to warming and help determine the wider impact on the ecosystem.”
Wentworth is one of 10 NETCARE graduate students and research associates based on the Amundsen, where each of them takes measurements using various sophisticated scientific instruments that determine the composition of the air and the size of atmospheric aerosol particles, as well as studying the chemistry of the surface layer of the ocean. U of T students and post-doctoral fellows are taking measurements from the air, via a research airplane operated by the Alfred Wegenar Institute that is making numerous flights over the Arctic this summer. In the coming years, researchers will collect flight data during at other times of year to capture seasonal changes in pollution.
“I am measuring the concentration in the air of a chemical that is emitted from the ocean,” said Emma Mungall, another U of T PhD student in chemistry. “To be able to see the water — both ocean water and the water of the melt ponds on the sea ice — that the chemical is coming from and smell the clean cold scent of the Arctic Ocean connects me much more strongly to the science. This experience has made the research real for me in a way that textbooks and journal articles can’t.”
NETCARE is funded by by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, The U of T scientists are working in partnership Environment Canada, Germany’s Alfred Wegenar Institute and a number of other Canadian universities and European partners.
Visit the NETCARE scientists’ blog of their research activities for a more in-depth look at their Arctic summer.