Not exact matches
Photo credit: DRIChakrabarty and colleagues found to their surprise that funeral pyre emissions contain sunlight -
absorbing organic carbon
aerosols known as brown carbon.
Formation of nitrogen - and sulfur - containing light -
absorbing compounds accelerated by evaporation of water from secondary
organic aerosols
An international team of researchers report in Nature Communications that they made a computer model of the planet's atmospheric conditions: they included natural and human - triggered
aerosols, volatile
organic compounds, greenhouse gases and other factors that influence temperature, one of which is albedo: the scientist's word for the capacity of terrain to
absorb or reflect solar radiation.
Black carbon - Operationally defined
aerosol species based on measurement of light absorption and chemical reactivity and / or thermal stability; consists of soot, charcoal and / or possible light
absorbing refractory
organic matter.
The
absorbing effect of
organic aerosols is thus implicitly included in the BC estimate, although to an unknown extent.
For the purposes of their report
organic aerosols only have a scattering (negative forcing) effect even though they are known to also
absorb.
Topics that I work on or plan to work in the future include studies of: + missing
aerosol species and sources, such as the primary oceanic
aerosols and their importance on the remote marine atmosphere, the in - cloud and
aerosol water aqueous formation of
organic aerosols that can lead to brown carbon formation, the primary terrestrial biological particles, and the
organic nitrogen + missing
aerosol parameterizations, such as the effect of
aerosol mixing on cloud condensation nuclei and
aerosol absorption, the semi-volatility of primary
organic aerosols, the importance of in - canopy processes on natural terrestrial
aerosol and
aerosol precursor sources, and the mineral dust iron solubility and bioavailability + the change of
aerosol burden and its spatiotemporal distribution, especially with regard to its role and importance on gas - phase chemistry via photolysis rates changes and heterogeneous reactions in the atmosphere, as well as their effect on key gas - phase species like ozone + the physical and optical properties of
aerosols, which affect
aerosol transport, lifetime, and light scattering and absorption, with the latter being very sensitive to the vertical distribution of
absorbing aerosols +
aerosol - cloud interactions, which include cloud activation, the
aerosol indirect effect and the impact of clouds on
aerosol removal + changes on climate and feedbacks related with all these topics In order to understand the climate system as a whole, improve the
aerosol representation in the GISS ModelE2 and contribute to future IPCC climate change assessments and CMIP activities, I am also interested in understanding the importance of natural and anthropogenic
aerosol changes in the atmosphere on the terrestrial biosphere, the ocean and climate.
Theoretically, coatings of essentially non-
absorbing components such as
organic carbon or sulphate on strongly
absorbing core components such as black carbon can increase the absorption of the composite
aerosol (e.g., Fuller et al., 1999; Jacobson, 2001a; Stier et al., 2006a), with results backed up by laboratory studies (e.g., Schnaiter et al., 2003).
Observational evidence suggests that some
organic aerosol compounds from fossil fuels are relatively weakly
absorbing but do
absorb solar radiation at some ultraviolet and visible wavelengths (e.g., Bond et al., 1999; Jacobson, 1999; Bond, 2001) although
organic aerosol from high - temperature combustion such as fossil fuel burning (Dubovik et al., 1998; Kirchstetter et al., 2004) appears less
absorbing than from low - temperature combustion such as open biomass burning.