Long-term Time-series of Arctic Tropospheric BrO derived from UV-VIS Satellite Remote Sensing and its Relation to First Year Sea Ice

Abstract. Arctic Amplification describes the rapid increase of the air temperature in the past three decades in the Arctic, which impacts on physicochemical conditions, the ecosystem and biogeochemistry. Every polar spring, the BrO explosion, a series of chemical reactions that release bromine molecules to the troposphere occurs over sea ice covered regions. This autocatalytic mechanism depletes boundary layer and tropospheric ozone, thereby changes the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere and facilitates the deposition of metals (e.g. Hg). In this study, we present a 22 year consolidated and consistent tropospheric BrO dataset, derived from four different UV-VIS satellite instruments and investigate the BrO evolution under the impact of Arctic Amplification. The retrieval data products from the different sensors are compared during periods of overlap and show good agreement. By studying the sensor merged time-series of tropospheric BrO vertical column densities, we find an increase in the magnitude of BrO explosion events under the impact of Arctic Amplification with an upward trend of about 1.5 % per year. Furthermore, the areas where BrO plumes frequently appear have changed, extending over larger regions in the Arctic during more recent years. Comparison to sea ice age data suggests that the reported changes in tropospheric BrO are linked in a complex way to the increase of first-year ice extent in the Arctic.