The Arctic is subject to a wide range of local and remote sources of air pollution, which can have harmful impacts on local Arctic communities, contribute to Arctic climate change, and harm sensitive Arctic ecosystems. Sources, processing, and fate of Arctic air pollutants are poorly constrained compared with those at lower latitudes. In particular, state-of-the-art models display diverse and poor skill in simulating Arctic air pollutant enhancements, both at the surface and aloft, while local sources of pollution from Arctic urban activities, shipping, and resource extraction have large uncertainties. Moreover, the physical and chemical processing of pollutants both during long-range transport to the Arctic and in the cold, dark conditions of the Arctic winter, are poorly known.
These knowledge gaps have implications for our confidence in predicting future Arctic climate response to remote and local emission changes, potential effects of increases in local sources, knowledge of pollution interactions with natural cycles, and societal and ecosystem impacts of Arctic air pollution.
The Air Pollution in the Arctic: Climate, Environment and Societies (PACES) initiative aims to address these key deficiencies by providing international community leadership in the coordination of large international collaborative efforts, such as coordinated field experiments and model comparison and evaluation exercises. In this proposal, organizers seek funds to help further develop the PACES initiative, and to disseminate recent PACES results to the Arctic research community.