Skip to Content

PARIS-IR: 12-years of Arctic Measurements

The chemical composition of the Arctic atmosphere is influenced by both natural and anthropogenic effects. As atmospheric composition is tied to climate, studying the changes in trace gas species can lead to a more thorough understanding of the changing Arctic conditions. Between 2004 and 2017 the Portable Atmospheric Research Interferometric Spectrometer for the InfraRed (PARIS-IR; 750 - 4400 cm-1 spectral range; 0.02 cm-1 spectral resolution) made measurements on a yearly basis at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL; 80.05° N, 86.42° W) located in Eureka, Nunavut, as part of the Canadian ACE/OSIRIS Arctic Validation Campaigns. These six-week campaigns commence just after polar sunrise in late February and continue into early April, during which PARIS-IR recorded solar absorption spectra every seven minutes, weather permitting. Prior studies have used the PARIS-IR springtime measurement dataset to retrieve profiles of a variety of trace gases (O3, HNO3, HCl, HF, CH4, C2H6, N2O, and CO), for the 2006 through 2013 period. The focus of this work is on extending these prior studies using the four additional years of measurements, spanning 2014 through 2017, to provide updates to the instrumental comparisons and trend analysis reported previously. In addition to this, a new retrieval product is being developed for water vapour, the development of which is complicated by the strong vertical gradient and high variability of atmospheric water vapour. The current versions of the PARIS-IR water vapour retrieval will be presented, and comparisons will be made between these and coincident measurements made by other instruments including the CANDAC PEARL Bruker 125HR, in-situ radiosondes, and the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment – Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS).

Event series  Brewer-Wilson Seminar Series