• 78.920°N 11.920°E 23 m a.s.l.

Observational platform

Germany

• Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)

https://awipev.eu

• Christoph Ritter
  Facility PI
• Mathias Palm
  PI deputy

Ny-Alesund is a supersite on Spitsbergen in the European Arctic for environmental research. Ny Alesund is a village of about 30 permanent inhabitants and houses several research stations. Ny Alesund is near the coast of the Kongsfjord. It is surrounded by mountains up to 600 m. It is in the Arctic Tundra, i.e. very sparse vegetation and little fauna.
The NF Ny alesund hosts two components:
- an RAMAN lidar
- an FTIR spectrometer
Additionally many meteorological measurements are available.

In the past the Arctic region showed a drastic warming in the winter months.

The LIDAR Component:A new scanning Raman Lidar in Ny-Alesund
For ACTRIS, a new scanning Raman lidar will be installed. The aim of this instrument is to provide aerosol profiles not only in the vertical but also over the inlets of the aerosol in-situ measurements on site, namely the Gruvebadet and Zeppelin station.
By a comparison between lidar and in-situ data we want to perform aerosol closure studies.

The FTIR component is a monitoring station for the polar atmosphere from ground to the mesopause (about 90 km altitude). The FTIR instrument is operated since 1992 and is part of the Network for detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (www.ndacc.de). The instrument measures infrared radiation in the mid- and near-infrared region. The spectra are used to study the evolution of the composition of the polar atmosphere. A spcial emphasis is laid on the Ozone chemistry.

• https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.42698.d001
• Platt et al. (2022). Atmospheric composition in the European Arctic and 30 years of the Zeppelin Observatory, Ny-Ålesund. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22(5), 3321-3369. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-3321-2022
• Notholt et al. (1995). Total column densities of tropospheric and stratospheric trace gases in the undisturbed Arctic summer atmosphere. J Atmos Chem, 20(3), 311-332. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00694500
• Notholt et al. (1993). stratospheric trace gas concentrations in the Arctic polar night derived by FTIR-spectroscopy with the Moon as IR light source. Geophys. Res. Lett., 20(19), 2059-2062. https://doi.org/10.1029/93GL01971