Scandinavia: projects/activities

Hydrological monitoring aims produce real time information of water level and discharge, ice thickness including freeze-up and break-up in winter from a network of monitoring stations. Monitoring data is utilized in water resource planning, water management and flood damage prevention. Monitoring is coordinated by Finnish Environmental Institute (SYKE).

Monitoring of air quality and deposition.

Monitoring of direct deposition. Project is run by Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).

The overall objectives for operation of the station will follow those defined in the AMAP programme. The main interests are the levels and trends of airborne toxic pollutants (POPs and heavy metals) in northern Fennoscandia.

The main specific objectives of UFTIR are: (1) To revise and homogenise the analyses of available experimental data for providing consistent time series of distinct tropospheric and stratospheric abundances of the target gases using new inversion algorithms. A common strategy for retrieval and characterisation of the vertical distributions of the target gases from FTIR ground-based measurements will be established. (2) To provide quantitative trends and associated uncertainties for the target gases over about the last decade, as a function of latitude throughout Western Europe, focusing on the troposphere. (3) To integrate the data in model assessments of the evolutions of tropospheric abundances. The measured burden and changes of the tropospheric gases will be compared with 3D model simulations, in order to help developing the latter, assist in explaining potential causes for the observed changes and to assess the consistencies between the trends at the surface to the free troposphere and lowermost stratosphere, and the agreement with known evolutions of emissions. UFTIR will make the community prepared to deliver tropospheric data for validation and synergistic exploitation of new satellite experiments like ENVISAT.

A millimeter wave radiometer is started operation at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden. The location of the instrument (67.8 N, 20.4 E) allows continuous observation of the evolution of ozone and ozone related trace gases in the Arctic polar stratosphere. It is designed for measurements of thermal emission lines around 204 Ghz. At this frequency observations include of ozone, chlorine monoxide, nitrous oxide, and nitric acid.

The DOAS instrument consists of grating spectrometer covering the visible and near ultraviolet spectral region. Zenith-scattered sunlight is collected by simple one-lens telescopes and fed via optical fiber bundles into the spectrometers, where atmospheric absorption spectra are obtained. The instrument runs automatically. Total column densities of the stratospheric trace species ozone, NO2, BrO, and OClO are retrieved from the spectra using the DOAS algorithm. These are species that play a major role in ozone chemistry, either by themselves in ozone destruction (BrO) or as indicators of chlorine activation/deactivation (OClO). The chemistry and dynamics of ozone destruction is investigated, e.g. with respect to the location of the polar vortex during the winter. The instrument is also useful for detection of polar stratospheric clouds using the zenith-sky colour index method.

FT-IR spectrometers are capable to quantifiy the total column amounts of many important trace gases in the troposphere and stratosphere. At present the following species are retrieved from the Kiruna data: O3 (ozone), ClONO2, HNO3, HCl, CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-22, NO2, N2O, NO, HF, C2H2, C2H4, C2H6, CH4, CO, COF2, H2O, HCN, HO2NO2, NH3, N2, and OCS Selected research topics and activities: chemical ozone depletion by observation of key species (O3, ClONO2, HNO3, HCl, ..) details of the ozone formation process by isotopic studies in ozone profile retrieval to detect dynamical changes transport studies of chemical tracers and tropospheric pollutants satellite validation

FT-IR spectrometers are capable to quantifiy the total column amounts of many important trace gases in the troposphere and stratosphere. At present the following species are retrieved from the Kiruna data: O3 (ozone), ClONO2, HNO3, HCl, CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-22, NO2, N2O, NO, HF, C2H2, C2H4, C2H6, CH4, CO, COF2, H2O, HCN, HO2NO2, NH3, N2, and OCS Selected research topics and activities: chemical ozone depletion by observation of key species (O3, ClONO2, HNO3, HCl, ..) details of the ozone formation process by isotopic studies in ozone profile retrieval to detect dynamical changes transport studies of chemical tracers and tropospheric pollutants satellite validation

Objectives 1. To develop the measurement technique further, providing more accurate measurements and extend the method to a larger number of trace species 2. To monitor the presence of CFC:s and other longlived anthropogenic tracers in the stratosphere 3. To use long-lived anthropogenic species as tracers of atmospheric motion, in particular for comparison with atmospheric models Reserarchers: Descartes is a joint research programme currently involving N.R.P Harris and J.A. Pyle, Centre for Atmospheric Science at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, U.K., and Hans Nilsson and Johan Arvelius, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden

Objective: to determine how solar activity influences temperatures, winds, electric currents and minor constituents and to allow possible anthropogenic influences to be determined. Uses primarily measurements by the ESRAD and EISCAT radars, plus ground-based and balloon-borne measurements of atmospheric electric fields and currents.

1. Observations of the physics of vertical and open boundary exchange in Regions of Restricted Exchanges (REEs), leading to improved parameterisation of these processes in research and simplified models. 2. Study of the phytoplankton and pelagic micro-heterotrophs responsible for production and decomposition of organic material, and of sedimentation, benthic processes and benthic-pelagic coupling, in RREs, with the results expressed as basin-scale parameters. 3. Construction of closed budgets and coupled physical-biological research models for nutrient (especially nitrogen) and organic carbon cycling in RREs, allowing tests of hypotheses about biogeochemistry, water quality and the balance of organisms. 4. Construction of simplified 'screening' models for the definition, assessment and prediction of eutrophication, involving collaboration with 'end-users', and the use of these models to analyse the costs and benefits of amelioration scenarios.

The main objective is to establish a scientific basis for the detection of the earliest signs of ozone recovery due to Montreal protocol and its amendments. To achieve this we will select the best long-term ozone and meteorological data sets available (by ECMWF and NCEP). Ozone data will be studied by using advanced multiple regression methods developed in this project. Meteorological data would allow to determine the dynamical changes and trends and assess their role in re-distribution of stratospheric ozone in recent decades and in order to force the Chemical Transport Models to assess the relative roles of chemistry and transport in ozone changes. Finally, the synthesis of the key objectives will improve the attribution of observed ozone changes to anthropogenic influences and to the variations in a natural atmosphere.