Aerosol and droplet size distributions and concentrations measured during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition

Ian Brooks, Barbara Brooks, Peggy Achtert

Aerosol and droplet size distributions and concentrations were measured by a Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (model FSSP-100). The FSSP was installed on the roof of the 'triple-lab' container on deck 4 of the icebreaker Oden. It was mounted on an actively rotator which kept the FSSP pointed into the wind. The FSSP is aspirated and the sample volume corrected for the impact of ambient wind speed on the sample flow rate.

The primary purpose of this data is to measure the droplet size distribution during fog events, but large aerosol particles are also measured during fog free periods.

Failure of the anti-icing heating resulted in ice build-up intermittently blocking the laser path, resulting in gaps in the time series. The laser failed before the end of the project. Data is available from August 1 2018 through September 6 2018. This covers transit of the Oden into the ice and most of the ice-drift period near the North Pole.

Citation

Ian Brooks, Barbara Brooks, Peggy Achtert (2020) Aerosol and droplet size distributions and concentrations measured during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/oden-ao-2018-aerosol-fssp-1

Data description

Separate daily files (netCDF) of total number concentration and particle size distributions on a 1-minute time base (averaged from 1-second raw measurements).

• Concentration files are ~170 kB (33 files)
• Size distribution files are 2.5 MB (33 files)
• Files include basic navigation data for each sample (time, latitude, longitude, ship heading, etc.)

Comments

Instrumentation operated by Ian Brooks and Peggy Achtert (School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, UK). Data processing by Barbara Brooks (National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Leeds, UK).

Acknowledgement of University of Leeds as the data provider is required whenever and wherever these data are used.

Logging and processing software (Fssp-logger) is available at GitHub.

Data were collected during the Arctic Ocean 2018 expedition on board the Swedish icebreaker (I/B) Oden, which was organized by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat.