terrestrial Photography ApplicationS on Snow covEr in Svalbard Project start: 2018-04-15 - end: 2021-12-31 The purpose of this activity is the development of a new snow product focused on the estimation of the fraction of snow cover in selected sites at different spatial resolutions. This dataset will be aimed to support the estimation of cryospheric information using remotely sensed data, with a particular attention to data obtained in the framework of the Copernicus program. The availability of this dataset in a natural laboratory such as Svalbard islands will support the reduction of the gap between remotely sensed data and modeling activities. This added value will be very important considering the higher spatial resolution of the sensors recently deployed. The dataset will be based on re-using data obtained from public repositories such as the digital elevation model of Svalbard, the available webcam imageries in Svalbard and satellite products from Landsat, Sentinel and MODIS missions. All the available data will be integrated in order to estimate the fraction of snow cover, at different spatial resolutions, for each satellite mission. These estimations, computed at different sites in Svalbard islands, will offer the opportunity to better integrate results obtained by remote sensing with modeling and air-snow interactions studies. Particular attention will be devoted to the formalization of agreements with raw-data providers in case of not-public licensing policies.

This dataset comprises measurements from moored nutrient monitoring sensor that measures nitrate concentration in the water column. The instrument is mounted on the Mooring Dirigibile Italia (MDI), which is managed by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR). The data was gathered at Kongsfjorden, Svalbard Island, since September 2024. This dataset is also part of the SIOS-Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, developed to observe the impacts of climate change, including the rapid loss of sea ice cover, the retreat of local glaciers, and the Atlantification of Arctic seas. Measured properties are: nitrate concentration in the water column. The acquisition of this time series data is still ongoing and will continue, bolstered by the inclusion of this infrastructure within the framework of the Italian PNRR project ITINERIS. This ensures sustained data collection and further enhances our understanding of the observed environmental changes.

2017 NAIS at Gruvebadet

Aerosol particles that can aid the formation of ice crystals in clouds are known as ice nucleating particles (INPs). These particles play a critical role in Arctic cloud formation and regional climate. However, it remains challenging for global climate models (GCMs) to well represent Arctic INPs. To understand the biases in the GCMs, we compare simulated results from a GCM with long-term meteorological, aerosol, and INP measurements at one surface station in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. We find that the simulated aerosol properties are biased from the observations within one order of magnitude, due to uncertainties in modeling physical and chemical aerosol processes. Using soil samples collected from Ny-Ålesund, we derived a new fit that relates local HLD with INP concentrations. This fit shows strong ice nucleating ability at warm temperatures, indicating the presence of organic matter in local HLD. Incorporating the new fit for local HLD INPs along with parameterizations representing INPs from other terrestrial and marine sources, our model reproduces measured INP concentrations reasonably well. Our comparison highlights the importance of local HLD to the Arctic INP population. Our findings emphasize the need for long-term Arctic measurements and better representation of HLD in GCMs to improve the understanding in Arctic INP properties and their role in Arctic cloud formation.

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2018 NAIS at Gruvebadet.

2019 NAIS at Gruvebadet

2023 NAIS at Gruvebadet

2022 NAIS at Gruvebadet

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