Tag: Atmospheric

Shaw and Cantrell Explore Aerosol-Cloud Interactions

National Science FoundationRaymond Shaw (Physics/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received $120,339 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation.

Will Cantrell (EPSSI) is the Co-PI on the project “EAGER: Exploring Aerosol Indirect Effects in a Laboratory Cloud Chamber.”

This is the first year of a potential two-year project totaling $243,869.

From Tech Today.

Claudio Mazzoleni on Soot Compaction

Soot Compaction

Cloud formation boosts soot albedo

A team in the US has found that soot becomes more compact under the conditions of cloud formation, scattering more light as it does so.

The compaction, which is greater for icy than supercooled cloud droplets, should be taken into account in future climate models, the researchers say.

“A change in the scattering [resulting from compaction] can have quite a large effect on how much soot would warm the atmosphere,” said Claudio Mazzoleni of Michigan Technological University in the US. “Therefore, knowing how soot compaction might affect the scattering is important to better understand future climate.”

Read more at Environmental Research Web, by Jon Cartwright.

Morphology of diesel soot residuals from supercooled water droplets
and ice crystals: implications for optical properties
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114010

Atmospheric Sciences Ranks in Top 50 for Research Spending

National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has released its annual research spending report, and Michigan Tech has moved up in its rankings.

Of 634 institutions that received research funding in 2014, Tech received $68.5 million, ranking 163rd overall nationwide. The University ranked 117th among public institutions.

Atmospheric science — a new interdisciplinary category — received $3.1 million and ranked 34th.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Jennifer Donovan.

Research in the atmospheric sciences at Michigan Tech is highly interdisciplinary and involves scientists from across campus, including the Departments of Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, and Physics, and the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. Research has been supported by DOD, DOE, EPA, NASA, NOAA, NSF, and the private sector.

Lynn Mazzoleni Leads a Team to Bring a New High-Resolution Spectrometer to Campus

PicoAir is not just air. It’s not just a sterile, preset mix of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and other molecules. As an atmospheric chemist, Lynn Mazzoleni knows air is dynamic and full of soot, sulfates, dust and other particles. Now, with a new piece of equipment, she can analyze complex aerosol samples and how their chemistry affects cloud formation.

State-of-the-Art Science: Peatlands to Pharmaceuticals
Mazzoleni is an associate professor of chemistry at Michigan Technological University and a recent Fulbright Scholar awardee. She is also the lead researcher on a team that is bringing a high-resolution mass spectrometer to campus through a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The instrument is an analytical chemistry tool that identifies the type and amount of chemicals in a mixture.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

Michigan Tech Team Helps Clarify the Impacts of Black Carbon in Nature Communications Study

Black CarbonDust specks are touted for their insignificance. But black carbon particles have global impact. Michigan Technological University researchers collaborated with a team from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and several other universities to shed light on the complex way black carbon and solar radiation interact to increase warming in the atmosphere. The research came out this week in Nature Communications.

Michigan Tech’s team focused on the microscopy work, which is also important for other research done in the lab and in the field, from thecloud chamber on campus to atmospheric monitoring on Pico Mountain in the Azores. Understanding the impacts of atmospheric particles will help refine climate change models, weather predictions and provide better information for making policies on black carbon and other short-lived pollutants.

Black Carbon

Black carbon is basically soot. The particles—similar in size to corn starch dust—make their way into the air from cooking fires, automobiles, industrial plants, wildfires and other kinds of burning. And rarely is black carbon just black carbon; the soot is often mixed with other atmospheric particles. Claudio Mazzoleni, an associate professor of physics at Michigan Tech, and his collaborators have to separate out the black carbon from everything else by heating up the particles.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

New HOLODEC Study in Science on Using Holography to Better Understand Clouds

HOLODEC StudyOctober 1, 2015—
Watching the clouds go by, swirls of white puff up and melt away. The changes mirror mixing within the clouds as drier air mingles with water-saturated air. New research led by Michigan Technological University with support from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz University, analyzes this mixing with holographic imaging and an airborne laboratory.

This new way of seeing clouds—and the unusual mixing behavior observed in them—is the focus of the team’s study, published in Science this week. Sharp boundaries form as dry air completely evaporates some water drops and leaves others unscathed. The findings will influence models that help predict weather and climate change.

Clouds
Raymond Shaw, a professor of physics at Michigan Tech, looks at the smallest part of clouds: droplets. To understand groups of droplets, Shaw and the NCAR team flew airplanes through fluffy, cottonball cumulus clouds in Wyoming and Colorado. Aboard the plane, the team took detailed 3-D images with an instrument called the Holographic Detector for Clouds (HOLODEC—yes, like Star Trek’s “holodeck”). These particular clouds were only made up of liquid water, and the size of those drops is a key part of cloud formation and mixing.

Read more and watch the video at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

What’s At The Edge Of A Cloud?

Scientists have just made a breakthrough in understanding how clouds interact with the surrounding air by studying some of the most boring clouds you can imagine in unprecedented detail.

“If you ask a child to draw a cloud they would draw a white puffy cloud floating in the air all by itself — and that’s the kind of cloud we were looking at,” says Raymond Shaw, an atmospheric scientist at Michigan Technological University.

Read more and listen to the “All Things Considered” podcast at NPR News, Minnesota Public Radio, by Nell Greenfieldboyce.

REF for Cantrell

The Vice President for Research Office announces the Research Execellence Fund Awards. Thanks to the volunteer review committees, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process.

Will Cantrell, EPSSI/Physics, received an Infrastructure Enhancement Grant for “Acquisition of a Cloud Condensation Nucleus Counter.”

Read more at Tech Today, by Natasha Chopp.