Chemical Imaging of Atmospheric Organic Particles in the Southern Great Plains Field Campaign Report
- Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
- Sonoma Technology, Inc.
- University of the Pacific
- Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
The main goal of this field project was to characterize the chemical and physical properties of atmospheric particles representative of the Southern Great Plains (SGP) environment to establish a relationship between the composition of aerosol particles and their atmospheric impacts. The specific research efforts were focused on in-depth microscopy studies of chemical and physical properties of atmospheric organic particles collected at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) SGP observatory. An array of novel molecular-level characterization and chemical imaging approaches were used to characterize chemical composition of particles and elucidate fundamental processes governing their atmospheric aging, evolution of chemical composition, optical properties, cloud formation ability, and implications for particle-cloud interactions – the most challenging problems relevant to predictive understanding of aerosol effects on climate.(1, 2) Atmospheric particles consist of a complex mixture of organic compounds with a wide range of molecular structures, morphologies, physical properties, and chemical reactivity. The chemical composition, morphology, and phase state of atmospheric particles are of crucial importance for understanding the formation and reaction mechanisms of particles, their atmospheric evolution, and their impact on climate. It is of great interest to understand how the chemical and morphological particle microstructure affects their physicochemical properties such as chemical reactivity, thermodynamics of gas-particle partitioning, phase separations inside individual particles, hygroscopicity, optical properties, and ability to form liquid droplets (cloud condensation nuclei) and ice crystals (ice nuclei) in clouds. The phase state of organic particles, which yet remains poorly understood, plays a key role in their physicochemical properties and has important implications in various atmospheric processes. Fundamental understanding of these physicochemical properties and their possible evolution in time requires advanced analytical approaches for chemical imaging of particles with a resolution on the scale of 10-100 nm.(3) Comprehensive characterization of the size-dependent chemical composition of individual particles collected at the site was carried out using advanced molecular-level characterization and imaging approaches to identify their possible sources and to correlate to their climatic properties.
- Research Organization:
- DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- Contributing Organization:
- Purdue University, Sonoma Technology, Inc., University of the Pacific, Washington University in St. Louis, State University of New York, Stony Brook
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-ACO5-7601830
- OSTI ID:
- 1544428
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/SC-ARM-19-018
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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