Dynamics of aerosol, humidity, and clouds in air masses travelling over Fennoscandian boreal forests

Abstract

Boreal forests cover vast areas of land in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, which are under amplified climate warming. The interactions between the forests and the atmosphere are known to generate a complex set of feedback processes. One feedback process, potentially producing a cooling effect, is associated with an increased reflectance of clouds due to aerosol–cloud interactions. Here, we investigate the effect that the boreal forest environment can have on cloud-related properties during the growing season. The site investigated was the SMEAR II station in Hyytiälä, Finland. Air mass back trajectories were the basis of the analysis and were used to estimate the time each air mass had spent over land prior to its arrival at the station. This enabled tracking the changes occurring in originally marine air masses as they travelled across the forested land. Only air masses arriving from the northwestern sector were investigated, as these areas have a relatively uniform forest cover and relatively little anthropogenic interference. We connected the air mass analysis with comprehensive in situ and remote-sensing data sets covering up to 11 growing seasons. We found that the properties of air masses with short land transport times, thereby less influenced by the forest, differed from those exposed to the forest environment for a longer period. The fraction of air masses with cloud condensation nuclei concentrations (at 0.2 % supersaturation) above the median value of 180 cm−3 of the analysed air masses increased from approximately 10 % to 80 % after 55 h of exposure to boreal forest, while the fraction of air masses with specific humidity above the median value of 5 g kg−1 increased from roughly 25 % to 65 %. Signs of possible resulting changes in the cloud layer were also observed from satellite measurements. Lastly, precipitation frequency increased from the average of approximately 7 % to about 12 % after a threshold of 50 h of land transport. Most of the variables showed an increase with an increasing land transport time until approximately 50–55 h, after which a balance with little further variation seemed to have been reached. This appears to be the approximate timescale in which the forest–cloud interactions take effect and the air masses adjust to the local forest environment.