In-situ aerosol data collected in the Arctic troposphere during a three-week period in 2004 were analysed. The measurements took place during late spring, i.e., at the time of the year when the characteristics of the aerosol distribution change from being accumulation-mode dominated to being primarily of the Aitken-mode type, a process that previously has been observed in the boundary layer. To address the question whether this transition is also detectable in the free troposphere of an aircraft-measured data from the ASTAR 2004 campaign were analysed. In this study, we present vertically as well as temporally results from both ground-based and airborne measurements of the total number concentrations of particles larger than 10 and 260 nm. Aircraft-measured size distributions of the aerosol ranging from 20 to 2200 nm have been evaluated with regard to conditions in the boundary layer as well as in the free troposphere. Furthermore an analysis of the volatile fraction of the aerosol population has been performed both for the integrated and size-distributed results. From these investigations we find that the transition takes place in the entire troposphere. © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Munksgaard.