TY - JOUR T1 - Siberian Arctic black carbon sources constrained by model and observation JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Y1 - 2017 A1 - Winiger, Patrik A1 - Andersson, August A1 - Eckhardt, Sabine A1 - Stohl, Andreas A1 - Semiletov, Igor P. A1 - Dudarev, Oleg V. A1 - Charkin, Alexander A1 - Shakhova, Natalia A1 - Klimont, Zbigniew A1 - Heyes, Chris A1 - Gustafsson, Örjan KW - Arctic haze KW - atmospheric transport modeling KW - carbon isotopes KW - Climate change KW - emission inventory AB - Black carbon (BC) in haze and deposited on snow and ice can have strong effects on the radiative balance of the Arctic. There is a geographic bias in Arctic BC studies toward the Atlantic sector, with lack of observational constraints for the extensive Russian Siberian Arctic, spanning nearly half of the circum-Arctic. Here, 2 y of observations at Tiksi (East Siberian Arctic) establish a strong seasonality in both BC concentrations (8 ng⋅m−3 to 302 ng⋅m−3) and dual-isotope–constrained sources (19 to 73% contribution from biomass burning). Comparisons between observations and a dispersion model, coupled to an anthropogenic emissions inventory and a fire emissions inventory, give mixed results. In the European Arctic, this model has proven to simulate BC concentrations and source contributions well. However, the model is less successful in reproducing BC concentrations and sources for the Russian Arctic. Using a Bayesian approach, we show that, in contrast to earlier studies, contributions from gas flaring (6%), power plants (9%), and open fires (12%) are relatively small, with the major sources instead being domestic (35%) and transport (38%). The observation-based evaluation of reported emissions identifies errors in spatial allocation of BC sources in the inventory and highlights the importance of improving emission distribution and source attribution, to develop reliable mitigation strategies for efficient reduction of BC impact on the Russian Arctic, one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. VL - 114 UR - http://www.pnas.org/lookup/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613401114https://syndication.highwire.org/content/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613401114http://www.pnas.org/syndication/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613401114 IS - 7 ER -