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Atomic and Nanoscale Investigation of Ice Nucleation on Atmospheric Aerosols


EMSL Project ID
48667

Abstract

Clouds control Earth's weather and climate. They cool the atmosphere by reflecting infrared solar radiation and warm the planet's surface by trapping infrared radiation. The nucleation of water droplets and ice crystals within clouds produce rain and snow that dominate the Earth's weather and shape its landscape. Our ability to model the global influence of clouds on weather patterns and climate change is limited by a lack of understanding of the small-scale processes that control clouds, particularly the processes that are responsible for heterogeneous nucleation of water droplets and ice crystals on aerosol particles. The goal of the proposed work is to develop a multi-model approach to investigate the heterogeneous nucleation of ice crystals on atmospheric aerosols. Environmental transmission electron microscopy will be used to study the ice nucleation process in situ with atomic resolution. This will enable the development of a fundamental understanding of heterogeneous ice nucleation and determine the influence of a range of important factors, including, but not limited to: surface and bulk crystal structure, topography, and chemistry. In parallel, atom-probe tomography will be applied to investigate the nanoscale structural and chemical changes that aerosols undergo during exposure to atmospheric conditions and correlate these changes with ice nucleation capacity.

Project Details

Start Date
2014-11-03
End Date
2015-09-30
Status
Closed

Team

Principal Investigator

Lyle Gordon
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Team Members

Libor Kovarik
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory