The concentration of apparent elemental carbon (ECa, based on a thermal‐optical method) in the snow was investigated in Svalbard (European Arctic) during spring 2007. The median ECa concentration of 81 samples was 4.1 μg l−1 and the values ranged from 0 to 80.8 μg l−1 of melt water. The median concentration is nearly an order of magnitude lower than the previously published data of equivalent black carbon (BCe, based on an optical method), obtained from Svalbard snow in the 1980s. A systematic regional difference was evident: ECa concentrations were higher in east Svalbard compared to west Svalbard. The observations of snow ECa cover spatial scales up to several hundred kilometers, which is comparable to the resolution of many climate models. Measurements of atmospheric carbonaceous aerosol (2002–2008) at Zeppelin station in Ny‐Ålesund, Svalbard, were divided to air mass sectors based on calculated back trajectories. The results show that air originating from the eastern sector contains more than two and half times higher levels of soot than air arriving from south to west. The observed east–west gradient of ECa concentrations in snow may be because of a combination of the atmospheric concentration gradient, the orographic effect of the archipelago, and the efficient scavenging of the carbonaceous particles through precipitation.