ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-7-15669-2007 Short-lived pollutants in the Arctic: their climate impact and possible mitigation strategies Quinn P. K. 1 Bates T. S. 1 Baum E. 2 Doubleday N. 3 Fiore A. M. 4 Flanner M. 5 Fridlind A. 6 Garrett T. J. 7 Koch D. 6 Menon S. 8 Shindell D. 6 Stohl A. 9 Warren S. G. 10 NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, USA Clean Air Task Force, Boston, MA, USA Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, New York, NY, USA University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA 09 11 2007 7 6 15669 15692 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/15669/2007/acpd-7-15669-2007.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/15669/2007/acpd-7-15669-2007.pdf

Several short-lived pollutants known to impact Arctic climate may be contributing to the accelerated rates of warming observed in this region relative to the global annually averaged temperature increase. Here, we present a summary of the short-lived pollutants that impact Arctic climate including methane, tropospheric ozone, and tropospheric aerosols. For each pollutant, we provide a description of the major sources, the mechanism of forcing, seasonally averaged forcing values for the Arctic, and the corresponding surface temperature response. We suggest strategies for reducing the warming based on current knowledge and discuss directions for future research to address remaining uncertainties.

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