Special issue  

In this special issue papers resulting from two major combined field campaigns shall be aggregated: (i) the Arctic CLoud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD), and (ii) the Physical feedbacks of Arctic boundary layer, Sea ice, Cloud and AerosoL (PASCAL). These two concurrent campaigns took place in the vicinity of Svalbard in May and June 2017. They were designed to study processes important for explaining Arctic amplification, and, in particular, for investigating the role of microphysical and dynamical properties of Arctic low- and mid-level, mixed-phase clouds, and their interactions with atmospheric radiation and aerosol particles. Ground-based, ship-borne, tethered balloon, aircraft, and satellite observations have been combined. The research vessel (RV) Polarstern, an ice floe camp (erected close to the icebreaker) including an instrumented tethered balloon, and the two research aircraft, Polar 5 and Polar 6, were jointly operated. Polar 5 served as a mobile remote sensing observatory looking at the clouds from above, whereas Polar 6 operated as a flying in situ measurement laboratory mostly sampling inside the clouds. The permanent ground station of Ny-Ålesund observed the clouds from below, applying similar but upward-looking remote sensing equipment as Polar 5. Some of the flights were performed underneath respective satellite tracks. In this special issue we compile a number of papers reporting about the results of the observations conducted during ACLOUD/PASCAL within the framework of the (AC)³ project (http://www.ac3-tr.de/).