Abstract. Vertical profiles of the mass concentration of black carbon (BC) weremeasured at altitudes up to 5 km during the PAMARCMiP (Polar Airborne Measurements and Arctic Regional Climate Model simulation Project) aircraft-based fieldexperiment conducted around the northern Greenland Sea (Fram Strait) duringMarch and April 2018 from operation base Station Nord (81.6∘ N,16.7∘ W). Median BC mass concentrations in individual altituderanges were 7–18 ng m−3 at standard temperature and pressure ataltitudes below 4.5 km. These concentrations were systematically lower thanprevious observations in the Arctic in spring, conducted by ARCTAS-A in 2008and NETCARE in 2015, and similar to those observed during HIPPO3 in 2010.Column amounts of BC for altitudes below 5 km in the Arctic (>66.5∘ N; COLBC), observed during the ARCTAS-A and NETCAREexperiments, were higher by factors of 4.2 and 2.7, respectively, than thoseof the PAMARCMiP experiment. These differences could not be explained solelyby the different locations of the experiments. The year-to-year variation ofCOLBC values generally corresponded to that of biomass burning activitiesin northern midlatitudes over western and eastern Eurasia. Furthermore,numerical model simulations estimated the year-to-year variation ofcontributions from anthropogenic sources to be smaller than 30 %–40 %.These results suggest that the year-to-year variation of biomass burningactivities likely affected BC amounts in the Arctic troposphere in spring,at least in the years examined in this study. The year-to-year variations inBC mass concentrations were also observed at the surface at high Arcticsites Ny-Ålesund and Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow, the location ofBarrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory), although their magnitudes were slightlylower than those in COLBC. Numerical model simulations in general successfully reproduced the observedCOLBC values for PAMARCMiP and HIPPO3 (within a factor of 2), whereas theymarkedly underestimated the values for ARCTAS-A and NETCARE by factors of3.7–5.8 and 3.3–5.0, respectively. Because anthropogenic contributionsaccount for nearly all of the COLBC (82 %–98 %) in PAMARCMiP and HIPPO3,the good agreement between the observations and calculations for these twoexperiments suggests that anthropogenic contributions were generally wellreproduced. However, the significant underestimations of COLBC forARCTAS-A and NETCARE suggest that biomass burning contributions wereunderestimated. In this study, we also investigated plumes with enhanced BCmass concentrations, which were affected by biomass burning emissions,observed at 5 km altitude. Interestingly, the mass-averaged diameter of BC(core) and the shell-to-core diameter ratio of BC-containing particles inthe plumes were generally not very different from those in other airsamples, which were considered to be mostly aged anthropogenic BC. Theseobservations provide a useful basis to evaluate numerical model simulations ofthe BC radiative effect in the Arctic region in spring.