Study of Russian Air Pollution Sources and their Impact on Atmospheric Composition in the Arctic

RAPSIFACT will interpret existing and conduct new measurements of greenhouse gases, gaseous air pollutants, and aerosols in Russia, which is the most important source region for Arctic air pollution. This has especially high relevance and is extremely urg ent because climate change is proceeding the fastest in the Arctic, and reducing the emissions of short-lived pollutants in the source regions affecting the Arctic is probably the only feasible short-term strategy for slowing Arctic climate change. The p roposal builds on the combination of a unique Russian measurement platform - the instrumented TROICA railway carriage -, data from several Russian air chemistry measurement stations, the FLEXPART Lagrangian tracer transport model, as well as measurements obtained at the Norwegian Zeppelin research station in Svalbard and other sites in northern Scandinavia. Three new TROICA missions will be conducted within the project, two of which will use the railroad from Kislovodsk to Murmansk, the country's only all -weather northern port and an Arctic pollution hot spot, the third will travel along the Trans-Siberian railroad. When interpreting the data (also from previous missions), the focus will be on the measurements taken in air masses travelling across the Bar ents Sea into the Arctic. The data will be compared to measurements obtained at Svalbard to assess the impact of Russian sources onto the Arctic. A sectoral focus will be on the oil and gas industry whose emissions in the Arctic are expected to grow consi derably in the future.