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 * University of California-San Diego
 * 9500 Gilman Drive
 * La Jolla CA 92093-0532 USA
 * Tel: 1-858-534-0000
 * Fax: 1-858-534-0000

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Professor Lynn Russell
Atmospheric Aerosol Group

FTIR Users: People and Resources
EaSM Project: Aerosol-Cloud-Earth Feedbacks
E-PEACE Project: Eastern Pacific Emitted Aerosol Cloud Experiment




ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOL GROUP

The Russell group develops models and analyzes observations to understand the
microphysical and chemical evolution of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Our
aim is to characterize the role of atmospheric aerosols on the Earth's climate.
Aerosol particles play an important role in the radiative balance of the
atmosphere, with their organic fraction representing one of the largest
uncertainties in our ability to quantify climate cooling and feedback effects.
The Earth's radiative forcing can be directly affected by
anthropogenically-produced particles, and the man-made particles over North
America typically include between 20% and 80% organic compounds by mass. The
composition and properties of these organic particles have been the focus of
significant field and laboratory efforts in the last 5 years. Yet two problems
remain. The first is that we still have only a very limited understanding of the
types of organic compounds present in most areas of the world, and for most
areas we do not even know what functional groups are present. The second problem
is that for the areas for which we know something about the organic composition,
we have only a very limited idea of the phase partitioning of those organics
between the gas and particle phases and, subsequently, of the hygroscopicity of
the particle phase.
The Atmospheric Aerosol Group at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
investigates the behavior of aerosol particles in the Earth's atmosphere under
both pristine marine and polluted urban conditions. Measuring the properties of
atmospheric structure and its chemical constituents is an important part of
these investigations, for which our group has developed instruments that we have
used in the field for airborne and shipboard observations. We have developed
significant expertise in using synchrotron radiation to measure organic
composition in individual organic particles with soft x-rays. Field projects are
an important part of our research effort, providing evidence of the role of
aerosol particles in atmospheric chemistry, meteorology, and radiation.
Interpreting the results of field projects involves both analysis with numerical
models of aerosol evolution and laboratory investigations.

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