Atmospheric chemistry, aerosols and climate change interactions: reducing the uncertainty
Event details
| Date | 22.07.2011 |
| Hour | 11:15 |
| Speaker | Christos Fountoukis |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Health problems due to air pollution and the potential detrimental effects of climate change are among the most important current challenges in Atmospheric Science. Air quality is continuously deteriorating in large urban environments and is estimated to cause more than 2 million premature deaths each year with fine particles and elevated ozone responsible for most of the adverse health effects. Meanwhile quantifying the effect of aerosols on the planet’s radiative balance is an urgent task in our efforts to understand and predict future climate change. To address our progress in these areas I will be focusing on three main directions of my research: i) Modeling the chemical transformations of atmospheric constituents on a regional scale with a special focus on the organic part of particulate matter currently being the least understood component of ambient aerosol ii) Quantifying the contributions of the various aerosol sources the role of long-range transport and the contribution of primary and secondary particulate matter to the ambient aerosol mass/number concentrations all quite unknown to date causing high uncertainty in predictions of particulate mass and chemical composition on a regional and global scale and iii) Studying aerosol – cloud interactions through modeling and experimental work for a better assessment of the indirect climatic effect of aerosols.
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Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Christina Treier