Black and Bloom Work Package 2 - Particulates - Aerosol and Meteorological data

Black and Bloom Work Package 2: Particulates

Black and Bloom is a research project, funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), that aims to unravel how dark particles (black) and microbial processes (bloom) darken and accelerate the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.  The data has been collected during two distinct field seasons (July 12 – August 18, 2016 and June 1 – 28, 2017). 

During this time there were instrument outages and also the aerosol samplers were turned off during helicopter activity.

Aerosol & Meteorological sampling

Aerosol particulates (for SEM) were sampled onto 47 mm diameter polycarbonate filters (0.22 um pore size).

Alphasense OPC-N2 optical particle counter (OPC) mounted on the mast was used to measure aerosol particle size distribution

Bertin Instruments Coriolis ® µ air sampler was used to collect larger volume ‘snapshots’ of airborne particulates in water for DNA analysis

WS-GP1 weather station (Delta T Devices Ltd) was used during the 2017 campaign to monitor meteorological parameters

Offilne DNA (OTU) analysis is presented of air samples collected during the campaigns as well as SEM particle size analysis.

In situ observations of atmospheric aerosols (optical article counter) and basic meteorological parameters were made to allow an estimate of deposition velocities to be made.