Surface-To-Mountaintop Transport Characterised by Radon Observations at the Jungfraujoch
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Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 12763–12779, 2014 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/12763/2014/ doi:10.5194/acp-14-12763-2014 © Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Surface-to-mountaintop transport characterised by radon observations at the Jungfraujoch A. D. Griffiths1, F. Conen2, E. Weingartner3,*, L. Zimmermann2, S. D. Chambers1, A. G. Williams1, and M. Steinbacher4 1Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, New South Wales, Australia 2Environmental Geosciences, Department of Geosciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland 3Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland 4Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), Dübendorf, Switzerland *now at: Institute for Aerosol and Sensor Technology, University of Applied Sciences, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland Correspondence to: A. D. Griffiths (alan.griffi[email protected]) Received: 5 May 2014 – Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 4 July 2014 Revised: 30 September 2014 – Accepted: 17 October 2014 – Published: 5 December 2014 Abstract. Atmospheric composition measurements at masses which have travelled far from emission sources and Jungfraujoch are affected intermittently by boundary-layer had time to mix. But local sources can still have an influence, air which is brought to the station by processes including depending largely on the recent history of vertical transport thermally driven (anabatic) mountain winds. Using obser- and associated mixing. This necessitates the development of vations of radon-222, and a new objective analysis method, carefully considered data selection techniques. we quantify the land-surface influence at Jungfraujoch hour The task of understanding vertical transport becomes par- by hour and detect the presence of anabatic winds on a ticularly complicated in mountainous terrain (Rotach and daily basis. During 2010–2011, anabatic winds occurred on Zardi, 2007; Weissmann et al., 2005), which affects vertical 40 % of days, but only from April to September. Anabatic exchange processes in site-specific ways that are not as well wind days were associated with warmer air temperatures understood as processes occurring over flat terrain (Zardi and over a large fraction of Europe and with a shift in air-mass Whiteman, 2013). Because of this complexity, Stohl et al. properties, even when comparing days with a similar (2009) found that Alpine sites were less useful than flat sites mean radon concentration. Excluding days with anabatic for constraining regional estimates of greenhouse gas emis- winds, however, did not lead to a better definition of the sions. unperturbed aerosol background than a definition based on The High Altitude Research Station Jungfraujoch is a key radon alone. This implies that a radon threshold reliably ex- European and Global Atmospheric Watch monitoring site cludes local influences from both anabatic and non-anabatic with a long-term history in atmospheric research (Leuen- vertical-transport processes. berger and Flückiger, 2008). Local influences are felt during periods of enhanced vertical transport and need to be reli- ably accounted for during data interpretation. The site is lo- cated in a saddle, 3454 ma:s:l:, on the north-west flank of the 1 Introduction Swiss Alps (Fig.1). Below station elevation, winds over the Swiss Plateau are channelled parallel to the mountain range, High-altitude mountain sites have long been recognised as whereas above mountaintops winds are most frequently from suitable places for characterising the chemical composition the north-west with a broad unimodal maximum (Furger, of the lower troposphere. These sites can be used to make 1992; Ketterer et al., 2014). At Jungfraujoch itself, however, measurements that are representative of continental to hemi- terrain channels the wind into a bimodal distribution with spheric scales (Keeling et al., 1976), also known as the base- maxima towards the north-west and south-east. line (Calvert, 1990; Parrish et al., 2014), by focusing on air Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 12764 A. D. Griffiths et al.: Surface-to-mountaintop transport at the Jungfraujoch the mountain slopes leads to a net buoyancy force, driving so- Permanent called anabatic upslope winds (Haiden, 2003; Mahrt, 1982). snow Weigel et al.(2006) documented a case where vertical ex- change was enhanced by a factor of three compared with flat 4000 terrain. Convergence near mountain peaks further enhances 3000 2000 the export of boundary-layer air to the free troposphere. 1500 In aggregate, mountain ranges create an injection layer 1000 above and within their lee (Henne et al., 2005; Nyeki et al., 800 600 2000) which is dynamically decoupled from the convective e n 400 h ô boundary layer but has similar tracer concentrations. In order R 300 200 to feed the vertical transport, boundary-layer air is drawn to- Elevation (m) 150 wards the base of the mountains from up to 80 km away over 100 the course of a day (Weissmann et al., 2005). The export of 50 20 mass to the troposphere is significant at a regional scale and 1 0 50 km boundary-layer air is exported beyond the peak height even 0 P o V a l l e y Elevation (m) when the top of the boundary layer is lower over the Plateau (Ketterer et al., 2014). Henne et al.(2004) show a schematic in their Fig. 13 which summarises this conceptual model of Figure 1. Jungfraujoch region. Radon detectors are installed at flow processes on a fair-weather day. Jungfraujoch and Bern, separated horizontally by 61 km. Anabatic winds cause tracer measurements near moun- tain peaks to exhibit a diurnal cycle that is approximately sinusoidal in shape (Forrer et al., 2000; Whiteman, 2000). Distinct pollution sources that have been identified at Unlike measurements in the boundary layer over flat ter- Jungfraujoch include: aerosols from the Swiss Plateau and rain, which are typically characterised by peak values around Rhône Valley (De Wekker et al., 2004), a range of species dawn, the maximum occurs in the late afternoon as a result from the industrialised Po Valley (Reimann et al., 2008, of boundary-layer air being brought to the mountain peak 2004; Seibert et al., 1998) and regional-scale European pol- by anabatic winds. Tracer concentrations usually drop af- lution, mainly from Switzerland, France and Germany (Ugli- ter the cessation of anabatic flow as the tracer injected dur- etti et al., 2011). In addition to these surface sources, strato- ing the day is carried away by free-troposphere winds. For spheric incursions can affect air composition, especially sites near mountain summits, the onset of katabatic drainage ozone concentration (Stohl et al., 2000; Trickl et al., 2010). flows in the evening can draw down tropospheric air from Surface emissions can reach Jungfraujoch via several pro- 500 to 1000 m above the site (Chambers et al., 2013; Perry et cesses (Forrer et al., 2000). The most relevant ones (Zell- al., 1999; Ryan, 1997). Under calm tropospheric conditions, weger et al., 2003) are as follows. however, the influence of boundary-layer air injected into the 1. Thermally driven boundary-layer growth and anabatic troposphere by anabatic winds can persist well into the next mountain winds (Henne et al., 2004, 2005; Collaud day (Whiteman, 2000). Coen et al., 2011; De Wekker et al., 2004; Weigel et al., There has been an ongoing effort to characterise these lo- 2006; Kossmann et al., 1999; Zellweger et al., 2000). cal influences on Jungfraujoch observations. Previous studies made use of in situ measurements of surface-emitted trac- 2. Dynamically driven winds, including Föhn winds, in ers with a strong concentration contrast between the bound- which the synoptic flow interacts with terrain (Drobin- ary layer and the free troposphere, such as aerosols (Col- ski et al., 2007; Campana et al., 2005; Lothon et al., laud Coen et al., 2011), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) 2003). (Prévôt et al., 2000), CO (Forrer et al., 2000) and moisture (Henne et al., 2004, 2005), while others have incorporated 3. Deep vertical mixing over flat terrain followed by ad- back-trajectories (Balzani Lööv et al., 2008; Kossmann et al., vection to the Alps. This can be associated with convec- 1999; Cui et al., 2011). While back-trajectories have proven tion (active cumulus, or cumulonimbus formation) or to be effective during the winter months, they are less able frontal systems (Purvis et al., 2003). The Iberian Penin- to resolve anabatic mountain winds due to the small-scale sula is a major source region (Cui et al., 2011). nature of these processes. Consequently, meteorological, sta- tistical or time-of-day filters (Andrews et al., 2011; Brooks Thermally driven or anabatic flows, the focus of this study, et al., 2012; Zellweger et al., 2003) have been used to avoid are most common under clear-sky, low-wind conditions in periods influenced by anabatic winds. Yet another approach summer, when incoming solar radiation is strong (Henne et is to relate synoptic weather classifications to the occurrence al., 2005). As well as the development of a deep convective of vertical transport (Collaud Coen et al., 2011). Data aug- boundary layer over the surrounding flat terrain, heating of menting in situ measurements has included lidar, used to de- Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 12763–12779, 2014 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/12763/2014/ A. D. Griffiths et al.: Surface-to-mountaintop transport at the Jungfraujoch 12765 tect the top of aerosol layers (Nyeki et al., 2000; Gallagher and characterisation, we show that taking the presence of an- et al., 2012; Ketterer et al., 2014), and radiosondes, which abatic winds into account does not improve upon the iden- are launched from near the mountain and used to define the tification of baseline air masses at Jungfraujoch. Instead, a unperturbed free troposphere (Weiss-Penzias et al., 2006). simpler method based purely on a radon threshold is just as In this study we employ radon-222 (radon hereafter), an effective (Sect.