Recently, at the European Aerosol Conference, I was honored to receive the August Schmauss award for “Contributions to atmospheric aerosol chemistry and its impact on health and climate”. This award is given by the Gesellschaft für Aerosolforschung (GAeF, Eng. Society for Aerosol Research) , who promote aerosol science and research. I’m very grateful to those… More Schmauss Award
I have recently moved from Colorado to Finland to join the Finnish Meteorological Institute as Tenure Track Research Professor of Aerosol and Cloud Processes and the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research at the University of Helsinki as a University Researcher. I am excited about the independence and opportunity to lead that this position… More Pastures New
Aerosols in the stratosphere (one of the upper layers of the atmosphere) affect the Earth’s albedo by interacting with solar radiation. The stratosphere is also home to the ozone layer, which shields the Earth’s surface from UV radiation from the sun. Aerosol particles in the stratosphere provide surfaces for chemical reactions, including reactions with ozone.… More Stratospheric Aerosol Observations
In 2020 I was looking through some of the aerosol data I collected on the Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) (https://csl.noaa.gov/projects/atom/) and noticed something weird. In a layer of the atmosphere called the lowermost stratosphere, we always saw a lot more small particles in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere. I hadn’t been looking… More Investigating a hemispheric imbalance in stratospheric aerosols
My neighboring group in the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory makes aerosol measurements from weather balloons, alongside other research projects. Every few weeks they send instrumentation measuring aerosol size distributions up to the stratosphere on a weather balloon, alongside instruments measuring things like ozone and water vapor run by scientists in the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory.… More Measuring aerosols from weather balloons
My colleagues and friends have been finding short explanations of the basic science behind using masks to reduce transmission of COVID19 and the current knowledge on what makes effective masks useful. I’m therefore sharing this information here for anyone who wishes to access it. Before we dive in, a couple of caveats: I am an… More Cloth Masks to reduce COVID19 transmission
I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to write that I am safe, well and able to keep doing my work during this COVID-19 pandemic. I realize that is not the case for everyone, and share my deepest sympathies with those of you experience illness, job loss or insecurity, caring for others, juggling childcare and… More Atmospheric Research during a Pandemic
This is just a short post to say that field work we were preparing for is now postponed for 12 months due to COVID-19. Almost all work at our labs has been moved to mandatory work-from-home for as long as necessary. I, like most of my colleagues, work on a mix of lab work, field… More Change of Plans
Test flights are underway! So far we’ve completed two flights out of NCAR Research Aviation Facility in Colorado. We’ve headed out both times over Wyoming and Nebraska because there is less air traffic there so we can change altitude more freely and try different maneuvers to test how the instruments on board cope. We got… More Test Flights of ACCLIP – part 2
This week we started test flights for the Asian Summer Monsoon Chemical Climate Impacts Project. These flights are about 6 months before we start the proper campaign, and are designed for those of us who have not flow before on the GV aircraft that we’re using for this project. This way, any problems that we… More Test flights for ACCLIP – part 1