Arctic Station Dirigibile Italia

AUXilliary MONitoring actions for the Ny-Ålesund atmosphere (AUXMON)

IADC_id: 153

active Call year: 2019

Subject area:

RIS - Project:

Principal investigator:

Project description:

GENERAL SECTION The Arctic is an extremely important environment. On one side it represents a still pristine environment in terms of atmospheric pollution, but, on the other side it is extremely fragile and due to phenomena, such as the arctic amplification it will be severely affected by climate change. It is therefore an invaluable laboratory for the study of atmospheric, environmental and climate changes. rnThis project proposes a set of integrated activities to monitor atmospheric characteristics regarding climate, night sky brightness and atmospheric composition in the Ny-Ålesund area, which is the main location for scientific research in Svalbard. rnThese activities are inserted and integrate a previous and still active monitoring campaign (see section 3 of the document). This project therefore provides for the continuation of this campaign and integrates it with the testing of further monitoring tools dedicated to the measurement of night sky brightness (section 1) and microbiological characteristics of the atmosphere (section 2).rnrn1 MONITORING NIGHT SKY BRIGHTNESS AND LIGHT POLLUTION IN THE NY-ALESUND AREArnrn2 MONITORING BIOAEROSOLS CONCENTRATION AND COMPOSITION IN THE ARCTIC ATMOSPHERE rnrn3 MONITORING THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE NY-ÅLESUND AREArnrn1.	MONITORING NIGHT SKY BRIGHTNESS AND LIGHT POLLUTION IN THE NY-ÅLESUND AREArnThe objective of this activity is to estimate the influence of artificial light emitted by Ny-Ålesund settlement and nearby research facilities on night sky brightness in the Ny-Ålesund surroundings. The monitoring campaign will take place during the polar night season 2019-2020. rnWe live in a world where the use of artificial light to illuminate the night environment is increasing.  Most of our practical, social and economic activities are done not only during the day but they are also frequently prolonged at night and artificial light allows us to do them safely. Often, public and private lighting systems, we use in our cities, industrial facilities and roads, can produce an excess of light if they are not designed properly. This excess of light is useless and is due mainly to lights that are badly directed or shielded. Therefore part of the emitted light is spread into the atmosphere (sky-glow effect), alters sky brightness (natural background light due to stars, moon and zodiacal light) and the surrounding night environment even for kilometres far from the lighted areas. This causes a lack of efficiency of energy use and an impact on the night environment and on terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The alteration of sky brightness has also important consequences on night measurements, primarily in the astronomy field but not limited to it. rnThe Svalbard archipelago is peculiar in this respect because the day and night cycle is almost absent due to its geographical position and night lasts from Autumn to Winter (polar night). The archipelago is characterised by a low influence of artificial light because population and consequently main lighting systems are concentrated in the few urban settlements: Longyearbyen, Ny-Ålesund and Barentsburg.  These characteristics Ny-Ålesund an ideal place to measure the effect of artificial light emitted by a town that can be considered a single isolated source of emission in the dark arctic landscape. Furthermore, Ny-Ålesund is a very sensitive place for many reasons and among them because there several research facilities near the town that might be affected by light pollution. rnFor this reason, we propose to measure night sky brightness at two places: a fixed installation out of town (Gruvebadet Observatory or other accessible facilities that are not directly illuminated by outdoor lighting system) and temporary measurement campaigns far from Ny-Ålesund. The first installation will allow us to monitor constantly night sky brightness in an area that is probably strongly influenced by town lights and also monitor night sky brightness variation due to meteorology (clear sky, cloudiness …) and moon cycle. The second installation will be probably a mobile ones and will allow us to monitor an approximation of background natural light and its variations. Alternatively, it will give us indication on how far from the light s of Ny-Ålesund will affect sky brightness.rnLight pollution is derived from the difference of the actual night sky brightness to background natural light. Actually there is not a well acknowledged standard for measuring night sky brightness. There are several type of devices from low cost devices that can provides measurement of cumulative radiance coming from a portion of the sky, to expensive ones, providing detailed sky images of radiance (brightness of the sky surface). There are also devices that provides also spectral composition of night sky irradiance.  A part from the cost, other aspects to be considered in the selection of the proper device are the environmental conditions and availability of energy and internet connection.rnFor this campaign we propose two methods of measurement. The first one is based on a low cost device, the sky quality meter (SQM), that estimates cumulative sky brightness of a portion of the sky under a field of view of 20° around the zenith. Even though SQM is a low cost device, it is the backbone of networks used by several international academic institutions public institutions and public meteorological agencies to monitor light pollution. Among them, IBIMET_CNR manages a network of five sensors distributed in urban and rural areas in Tuscany (Italy) since 2015. This device can operate from -40°C to 50°C and therefore is suited for extreme environment like the Arctic. In January 2019, we tested in for three days in Longyearbyen, using batteries and the device worked properly until -24°C. It is also very versatile because it is a low energy demanding device and it can operate for some days with batteries. Therefore, this device is suited both for the fixed site operating continuously and for the temporary campaign since it needs just a small pole to be fixed on and pointing it upward towards the zenith. rnThe second device is an all-sky camera with a fish eye lens to capture images of the night sky dome. Analysis of the RGB channels of each pixel of the image can provide spatial information about the source and intensity of light at the measurement site. Such analysis could be useful to identify which light sources are affecting measurement devices at certain places and take actions to limit these effects. This device is suited for temporary and mobile campaigns to assess several points at different distances from town.rnThe measurement campaign should be conducted during polar night period (Autumn-Winter). The fixed measurements should tentatively start in October 2019 and last till March 2020. Temporary measurement should be taken in the same period but in nights without moon. Therefore, ideally we would need to operate in Ny-Ålesund two times:rnrn•	in October, during no moon period, to set the devices and take some preliminary measurements with both devices at different placesrnrn•	In Spring, at the end of the polar night period to collect the devices and take other mobile measurements.rnrn2.	MONITORING BIOAEROSOLS CONCENTRATION AND COMPOSITION IN THE ARCTIC ATMOSPHERErnArctic amplification phenomena are strongly tied to radiative effects and therefore to cloudiness and the regional radiative balances. Several microorganisms are known to be efficient ice nucleators (IN) enabling them to potentially affect cloud and precipitation patterns. In fact, at least at ground level, the arctic air is rich in Pseudomonadales (39% relative abundance, Cuthbertson et al., 2017) to which Pseudomonas syringae, one of the best-known microbial IN, pertains. It is a specific aim of this action to perform samplings in the troposphere via a custom-made bioaerosol sampler attached to a tethered balloon. rnThe custom sampler is made by a lightweight, 100 L/min 24 VDC blower, a fully-autoclavable open-faced filter-holder, a flow-monitoring unit (mass-flow meter and hot-wire anemometer), a temperature, relative humidity and pressure sensor for altitudinal information, a I/O unit for controlling the start and stop of the blower and, finally, a data-logging unit to record all the acquired information. Air is drawn through a sterile filter via a 47mm open-faced filter holder in order to minimize airflow resistance. The filter holder is fully autoclavable to minimize any kind of contamination on the sampled filter. The I/O unit will contain a programmable microcontroller to set mission parameters (e.g.: altitude at which to start the sampling, time/volume of sampling, etc.). rnThe aim of this first campaign would be to validate the proper functioning of the airborne custom-made bioaerosols samplers in arctic climates and with local aerosol concentrations on which there is not much information. rnThe test campaign will be performed by rising the balloon at different height of interests and sampling for at least 10 minutes (for a total sampled volume of 1 m3 of air).rnAfter collection the filters are then incubated on an appropriate growth medium at controlled temperature for 48-hours in order to allow any sampled microorganisms to grow and the number of colonies forming unit (CFU) is counted by hand. rnThis kind of microbial growth method is easily deployable with minimal equipment, and, therefore, even in logistically complicated situations such as the arctic. Growth medium preparation requires only MilliQ water, some basic chemicals and an autoclave. The medium is then poured into standard issue single-use sterile petri dishes that are left to dry out under a clean bench. The sampled filter is then placed inside one of these dishes with the sampled face down and the closed dish is left to incubate. The method therefore requires minimal transport of equipment to the station and poses no problem from the point of view of the logistics. rnSince culturable microorganisms generally represents 10% (or less) of the total microbial population in the atmosphere, the culturing assay is a very conservative method to quickly evaluate the effectiveness of the sampler: any kind of test or quantification method that does not rely on the viability of the microorganisms will have a much higher concentration available independently from its sensitivity.rnIf this first campaign is successful the sampler can become another asset for investigating in depth the microbial composition of the atmosphere in the arctic. Future campaigns can therefore provide much more in-depth information by shipping back collected samples to appropriate laboratories such as metagenomic composition of the microbiota, total amount of airborne microorganism via epifluorescence microscopy or flow cytometry and biological IN activity.rnAs for the latter endpoint (biological ice-nucleation activity), IBIMET has the expertise to build, test and deploy portable IN assays that can be delivered to the Ny-Alesund research station for further campaigns, in case the test one is successful.rnThis latter step would greatly benefit any future inquire for biological IN activity in situ, since IN activity is strongly affected by storage and shipping and would therefore make the determination of this endpoint much more reliable. rnFinally, while the main aim of the sampler is to collect air for microbiological tests, it is easily adaptable to any kind of filter-based air sampling, allowing to work in strong synergy with any other activities requiring this kind of sampling. rnrn3.	MONITORING THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE NY-ÅLESUND AREArnThe usage of low-cost sensors is getting more and more relevant for scientific research due to the possibility of deploying multiple sensors and obtain spatialized information that would not be possible with a single reference sensor. The ruggedness, reduced cost and reduced power consumption make low-cost sensors especially appealing for the Arctic environment where there are logistical difficulties in deploying more sensitive instrumentation and, therefore, a scarcity of data. rnThe main drawback of low-cost sensors is that the reliability of their measurement must be appropriately tested since they cannot reach the measurement sensitivity of a reference high-cost instrument. This feasibility test has already been done by CNR IBIMET that in 2017 deployed a low-cost AIRQino sensor in the Gruvebadet Observatory. AIRQino is a sensor ensemble that measures both meteorological parameters (temperature and relative humidity) and a series of components of the atmosphere (CO2, particulate matter, NO2 and O3). This low-cost sensor has been running more or less continuously till today and it’s still gathering data. Several months of data from the low-cost sensors have been compared to reference sensors from the Climate Change Tower (CCT) in order to investigate accuracy of the AIRQino sensor as well as drift. The comparison was satisfactory and showed the feasibility to employ AIRQino sensors in Svalbard (Carotenuto et al., 2019). rnThe third section of this proposals encompasses the following actions:rnrn•	Maintenance of the previously installed AIRQino sensorrnrn•	Deployment of two more low-cost AIRQino sensorsrnFor the second actions the two new sensors ensemble will be deployed at the Dirigibile Italia research station and in the Ny-Ålesund harbour (only after accordance with King’s Bay personnel). These two new sensors, in combination with the remote one in the Gruvebadet Observatory will allow to derive spatialized information about atmospheric composition across a gradient of human activities. This dataset will yield valuable auxiliary information for all the other experiments running in the area and help to define a spatialized dataset for relevant atmospheric parameters. The two new sensors will undergo a period of calibration before deployment at the CNR IBIMET Air Quality facilities and a second one at the CCT. rnrnREFERENCESrnrnCarotenuto, F., Gualtieri, G., Gioli, B., Vagnoli, C., Mazzola, M., Viola, A., Vitale, V., Taejin, C., & Zaldei, A. (2019).  Application of Low-Cost Sensors in Extreme Environments: One Year of Measurements. Poster presented at the workshop L'Artico visto da Ny Alesund. Rome, Italy, 18-19/03/2019. rnCuthbertson, L., Amores-Arrocha, H., Malard, L., Els, N., Sattler, B., & Pearce, D. (2017). Characterisation of Arctic Bacterial Communities in the Air above Svalbard. Biology, 6(4), 29. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology6020029rn

National/International Cooperation:

Funding institution:

Research group:

Contact person:

Start year:

End year:

Metadati: Go to metadata catalogue

Project information

AUXilliary MONitoring actions for the Ny-Ålesund atmosphere (AUXMON)