New Insights on the Chemical Composition of the Siberian Air Shed From The Yak-Aerosib Aircraft Campaigns
There are very few large-scale observations of the chemical composition of the Siberian airshed. The Airborne Extensive Regional Observations in Siberia (YAKAEROSIB) French–Russian research program aims to fill this gap by collecting repeated aircraft high-precision measurements of the vertical distribution of CO2, CO, O3, and aerosol size distribution in the Siberian troposphere on a transect of 4,000 km during campaigns lasting approximately one week. This manuscript gives an overview of the results from five campaigns executed in April 2006, September 2006, August 2007, and early and late July 2008. The dense set of CO2 vertical profiles, consisting of some 50 profiles in each campaign, is shown to constrain large-scale models of CO2 synoptic transport, in particular frontal transport processes. The observed seasonal cycle of CO2 in altitude reduces uncertainty on the seasonal covariance between vegetation fluxes and vertical mixing, known as the “seasonal rectifier effect.” Regarding carbon dioxide, w...