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Particles affecting our climate and health by Gonzalo Ferrada
Ferrada, Gonzalo
Graduate Student
Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Atmospheric sciences, air-quality modeling
2020-03-04
2020 submissions
Every year, trillions of metric tons of particles are released to the atmosphere by multiple sources: dust storms in the Middle East and Saharan desert; urban activities in densely populated areas such as Eastern China and India; and wildfires happening in Siberia, the Amazon forest and different regions of the African tropical forest. Besides their effects on human health, these particles interact with the solar radiation and can act as nuclei for cloud formation, altering the climate not only in the regions affected, but also globally. Atmospheric models are used to simulate and study the impacts and interactions of these particles in the Earth system and our climate. The figure shows the amount of particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere observed during September 2016 modeled with the NASA GEOS-5 model. Green colors represent a persistent layer of haze, while the yellow and reddish colors denote very polluted conditions in which the sky was never seen as blue. It is important to understand the role of these particles in the climate to create mitigation and contention policies. In recent years, NASA has led several field experiments using fully equipped aircrafts to measure these particles in different regions of the world. It is expected that these observations improve our models and climate predictions.
The author acknowledges the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD) and the resources provided to conduct the model simulations using NASA’s Discover supercomputer.
1st place (tie) in the 2020 People's Choice Category
climate change pollution aerosols
Capture Your Research
University of Iowa. Lichtenberger Engineering Library University of Iowa. College of Engineering. NEXUS Program Virgil M. Hancher Auditorium
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
Contact Kari Kozak in the Litchenberger Engineering Library at the University of Iowa: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/eng/contact/
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