Creation of surface layer thermal inversions monitoring network: first examples for Arctic cities 

Intensive and frequent surface-based thermal inversions are persistent features of climate in the Arctic region and in cities with cold and long period winter season.  Surface-based inversions formed in cities are most interesting for research, because of their impact on people’s health. Besides, “urban” surface-based inversions differ from “rural” ones, because of interactions with the urban heat island (UHI). Actually, urban surface-based inversions in the Arctic are weakly understood due to poor meteorological monitoring equipment of most Arctic regions and because the reanalysis resolution is too low for the cities.The main problems arising in the study of urban temperature inversions in the Eastern Arctic are:Low technical equipment of the region: radiosonde stations are usually located on the coast and not always near cities, there are no acoustic sounding stations, meteorological stations are most often located outside the city; A relatively small area of cities that does not allow conducting research only using reanalysis databases Given the above problems, the best method for measuring air temperature at different levels is gradient measurements. To estimate the frequency of surface-based inversions and spatial distributions in the city of Apatity (Kola Peninsula), Norilsk (Eastern Siberia) and Yakutsk (Far East) measurements during the winter period in 2025 were provided. For this goal, gradient observation complexes based on an automatic temperature recorders TZone Data Logger with sensors at altitudes of 1.5 and 3 meters (Figure 1), respectively, were installed. In Apatity were installed 5 stations for monitoring spatial differences in different urban zones.Fig.1 Gradient measuring complex in YakutskPreliminary results demonstrated that the recurrence of surface inversions is higher in the central part of Arctic settlements despite higher temperatures than, for example, in Yakutsk.  This work has been supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation, RSF project №23-77-30008