Record for duration of data time series

We are now in September, this means deep winter in Antarctica is over and more and more sunshine is coming back. There is already more than 10 hours sunlight per day at Utsteinen. And the instruments are still operational, without any break since the last team left Utsteinen in February !! This means a new record. The longest period for continuous aerosol data until now has been from November 2013 until the morning hours of 1 September 2014. This is great news and many thanks have to go to the team members who prepared the station’s energy system for the uninhabited period (and who are supervising it remotely from Belgium). But it also means that our own precautionary measures for unattended instrument operation are paying out. Now let’s hope that it keeps going until another BELARE expedition team arrives at Princess Elisabeth station.

Particle number per cm³ at Utsteinen from November 2014 to August 2015

 

The figure shows the time series of the particle number concentration from November 2014 until end of August 2015. The data are cleared of any contamination. It can be seen that from November to March the mean concentration was around some hundreds of particles per cm³, with a peak around end of February/beginning of March. The mean number concentration decreased afterwards to reach a minimum in June, July. In August, number concentrations started to increase again. During June and July, the number concentration fell to some tens of particles per cm³. During austral winter, the Antarctic vortex, the atmospheric circulation, forms a quasi-barrier for air masses from lower latitudes. Also during winter, there is hardly any sunlight for driving photooxidative aerosol chemistry and there is a general lack of precursor gases for new particle formation and condensational growth of particles. However, over the whole time period, there were several events, when the number concentration increased distinctly over very short periods of time, often to some thousand particles per cm³. Most probably, these periods reflect the influence of air masses transported to Princess Elisabeth station via synoptic scale events (cyclones, transporting air masses from easterly directions, including maritime origin), indicate entrainment of air masses from the higher troposphere, or indicate periods when new particle formation could be detected at PE.