Abstract
Systematic year-round observations of submicron aerosols were carried out at Syowa Station (69°00'S, 39°35'E) in 1978. On the basis of the results of these observations, it is concluded that two types of aerosols originating from different sources are present in the Antarctic croposphere. With the intrusion of maritime air, mostly in the polar night months, sea salt particles and ammonium sulfate particles contained originally in the clean maritime air are dominant. The size distribution of such aerosols is monomodal, having a single mode at around 0.03 μm in radii. On the other hand, in the sunlit months, sulfuric acid droplets are predominant and the size distribution is bimodal, having an additional mode at around 0.005 μm in radii. Those sulfuric acid particles seem to be formed photochemically within a specific layer in the mid to lower troposphere over Antarctica. Most Antarctic submicron particles are of tropospheric origin, not of stratospheric nor anthropogenic origin.
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Ito, T. Study of background aerosols in the Antarctic troposphere. J Atmos Chem 3, 69–91 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00049369
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00049369