Measuring Tiny Particles in the Atmosphere

Narration: Christina Williamson

Transcript:

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I actually started off in fundamental particle physics, so working at

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CERN in Geneva, and

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that was really exciting, I loved the research environment, I loved the work, but

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most people who work there are really kind of motivated by these very abstract

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fundamental problems or the beauty of a mathematical equation, and I'm so happy

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people like that exist, but it's not me. I'm more excited by

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tangible problems, things that we can relate to society, to human needs and problems

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problems and so moving towards the atmosphere, looking at air

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quality and climate just made more sense for what I'm personally

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motivated by. I'm measuring the number and size of aerosol particles.

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Aerosols are any small solid or liquid drop that's suspended in the air

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so in the atmosphere that we fly through.

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They can come from multiple different sources, so they could be

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desert dust that's blown up into the atmosphere

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and the little bits of sand stay there

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or it could be sea spray blown up, but you can also get

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things like particles forming out of the gas phase to make solid or liquid drops

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in situ in the atmosphere. And those are the really small ones, we're quite interested in measuring those.

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The reason we care about aerosols in the atmosphere is

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they're affecting climate, they're affecting the radiative budget, and even though they're quite

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a small effect in there when you compare it to things like greenhouse gases, they're one of the less

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well-understood ones, and so the better we can start understanding these aerosols,

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where they are, how they move around the atmosphere, how they're transformed

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the smaller the uncertainties we have on our climate predictions.

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Also aerosols are really important for human health and so we want to be able to

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predict where we've got high concentrations of them, what they're made of

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and all of the things that might be impacting health, and so it's really interesting for us

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to measure them, especially this whole sort of global pattern that we can capture on ATom.

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And really see where that's happening and potentially why it's happening. Where the

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window would normally be on a plane we have like a metal window plate, and on that, we have a custom inlet

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that brings in air without losing or changing the particles that are present in it.

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And then this goes through a system of different tubes to bring it to all of the different instruments

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in our suite. And we need multiple instruments because aerosols can range

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hugely in size from just a huge nanometers in size

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right up to many microns, and so you have use different techniques to meaure them

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in different sizes.