Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry Group (APCG)

 

Ongoing Projects

Aerosol and cloud feedback in the Polar regions

Dusan Materic

 

One of the least known feedbacks in the Earth Climate system are aerosols and their interaction with clouds and solar radiation. It is commonly assumed that aerosols have a cooling effect, but the magnitude is poorly constrained. The role of the organic aerosol (OA) is especially hard to understand because of large number of different compounds and formation pathways.
The core piece of this project is the development of a PTR-MS method to study the OA composition of the past by an alyzing organic species in ice cores. This method is expected to put constraints on natural OA during preindustrial times through the analysis of ice cores from glaciers.