| 08 May 2026
Turbulent atmospheric particle fluxes in the high Arctic: Surface type dependence and variability
Abstract. The Arctic is warming at a significantly faster rate than the global average, which is affecting local climate processes. Aerosol particles play a central role by influencing the energy balance directly through the scattering and absorption of solar radiation and indirectly by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. However, the processes that control aerosol concentrations, such as the mechanisms governing vertical particle exchange, are not well understood, particularly over sea ice. During the ARTofMELT campaign in spring 2023, five weeks of continuous eddy covariance measurements of turbulent particle fluxes were conducted in the High Arctic to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of particle sources and sinks over three surface types. Overall, net particle deposition dominated, with median deposition fluxes of −0.02 × 106m-2 s-1 over closed ice. This confirms the role of ice surfaces as a particle sink under low to moderate turbulence. Under strong winds, net particle emission fluxes of up to 0.98 × 106m-2 s-1 were observed over closed ice surfaces, which are likely linked to processes involving blowing snow. A mixture of emission and deposition was observed over leads and open water surfaces. These observations highlight how surface heterogeneity and turbulence intensity can influence particle exchange in the High Arctic. As sea ice retreats and the extent of open water increases, local particle sources are expected to become more relevant to Arctic aerosol budgets and cloud processes. The results provide observational constraints on particle fluxes, helping to reduce related uncertainties in Arctic model simulations.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
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This manuscript presents eddy covariance measurements of turbulent particle fluxes in the High Arctic from the the ARTofMELT campaign. This manuscript describes a technically competent measurement campaign that yields results broadly consistent with prior studies. It is reported that net deposition dominates over closed ice (median -0.02 × 10⁶ m⁻² s⁻¹), while emission events up to 0.98 × 10⁶ m⁻² s⁻¹ occur during high-wind conditions associated with blowing snow. The manuscript was interesting and nice to read and the resulting dataset is potentially valuable to further the understanding of dynamics governing particle fluxes in the Arctic.
However, in its current form, the manuscript reads primarily as a data description rather than a hypothesis-driven scientific investigation. The analysis remains superficial, and the conclusions do not offer the substantial new mechanistic or process-level insights required for publication in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, for which (citing the Aims & Scope of the journal):
“Articles should have important and clearly argued implications for our understanding of the state and behaviour of the atmosphere and climate or present substantial new insights into the atmosphere's role in other parts of the Earth system.”
Because the manuscript does not present significant insights or testable hypothesis, but is rather a dataset and campaign measurement description, I recommend rejection, with the suggestion that the authors consider a more specialized journal after major revision. Below I provide a non‑exhaustive list of methodological issues and suggestions to strengthen the results, should the authors choose to revise for another venue.
As a further note: Michael Tjernström and Birgit Wehner do not appear to meet the criteria for co‑authorship. I suggest removing them from the author list unless their role is clarified and justified.
Major comments:
Specific line comments:
L1-4: This part of the abstract seems overly general and could be tailored better to the manuscript
L6: The terms “spatial and temporal” appear several times throughout the manuscript, but the study considers mostly surface‑dependent variability. I suggest removing these terms throughout the manuscript
L6-7: specify surface types here
L13-14: “The results … similations” indicates only one of the potentialities of the dataset, so this sentence should not be definitive
L20-31: this section is too general and should be better tailored to the manuscript scope or summarized
L52: numerical models are mentioned, but the authors should be more specific in this regard, citing the actual models they refer to
L73-74: the authors claim that this dataset is one of the longest dataset for the Arctic region. If this claim is to be made, the duration of other datasets should be explicitly stated in the introduction
L78-79: similarly to the abstract, “The results might provide…”
L86-91: A map would be much clearer than this explanation. It would also allow to represent clearly further information, such as dominating surface type, or meteorological classification (I’m referring to classification 1-6 in Fig. 4)
L157: Depending on whether and how the scope of the manuscript is redefined, the authors might consider moving Figure 2 to the supplementary material/appendix, and to summarize the corresponding methodology paragraphs
L164: The authors should specify how the high-frequency losses were corrected
L222-223: “Particle fluxes … atmospheric stability” is unnecessary
L230 (and following): units should be always reported the first time a variable appears
L247: The same roughness length is applied to all surface types, but including a z0 that varies with surface type should be a fairly low-effort improvement
L253: what does e0 depend on?
L285: The separation between meteorological periods could be made clearer by extending the dotted lines at the top all the way down through the panels
L299-302: These concentration averages might be currently overestimated. The authors should revise this part after improving the exclusion criteria for pollution periods
L339-354: Why are boxplots presented here instead of the usual plots? Why are the authors presenting binned regression analysis rather than analysis on the actual observations, which would be much simpler and more transparent?
L353-354: The authors appear to consider only linear correlation (given that they use binned quantities). Do other relationships emerge when the actual non‑binned data are considered?
L371: Why do other studies in Figure 7 report multiple values while for the current study there is just one?
L421-424: How often do negative values appear? Could the author explore attribute causes more consistently? These instances seem to constitute a non-negligible fraction of the data
L454: It could be useful to specify particle sizes here
L478-495: As mentioned above, this section appears redundant and superficial. I suggest removing it and summarizing it (if at all) as part of the conclusions or future directions