Join us for a Director's Town Hall with CIRES Director Waleed Abdalati on Tuesday, September 1 at 9 am, for both CU Boulder and NOAA employees. 

Join via Google Meet: meet.google.com/tcu-dfws-aav 

Phone: +1 530-453-9054 (PIN: 676853587)

ESOC virtual coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am on Wednesdays. We will be meeting remotely on Zoom. Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

This week we will have a presentation from Fangfang Yao, a visiting CIRES post-doc fellow, Recent lake volume changes in global landlocked basins and the links to climate variability. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

ESOC virtual coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am on Wednesdays. We will be meeting remotely on Zoom. Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

Chemistry of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Atmosphere

Joost de Gouw, ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released from many different natural and man-made sources to the atmosphere. VOCs are removed by different oxidants on time scales of minutes to months with oxidized VOCs, ozone and fine particles as a result. These processes affect air quality and climate and are a challenge to understand due to the large number of different VOCs that are released to the atmosphere and the analytical difficulties in measuring all of these compounds as well as their oxidation products.

In our laboratory, we make measurements of VOCs by proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-TOF) and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). PTR-TOF allows measurements of many different VOCs with high time resolution and without the need for pre-separation or sample treatment. GC-MS allows higher chemical detail, but at the cost of time resolution. We also combine these methods to better understand the compounds that are detected by PTR-TOF in different environments.

Several different ongoing and future projects will be presented in this seminar. First, we use PTR-TOF for measurements of VOCs in indoor environments. From the results we learn about the sources of VOCs from people, chemical products and building materials, the chemical transformations of these VOCs and other loss process such as surface uptake and ventilation to the atmosphere. Second, we are working on the emissions and chemistry of VOCs released from volatile chemical product (VCP) use to the atmosphere, which was recently discovered to be the dominant source of VOCs in urban air. In this research we make measurements of VOCs in urban air, separate the different emission sources and describe the chemical transformations of VOCs after emission. Finally, we are working on a chamber study to better understand the formation of secondary organic aerosol from biogenic VOCs."

and

Laboratory Studies of Contact Efflorescence in a Long Working Distance Optical Trap

Maggie Tolbert, ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"Because homogeneous salt efflorescence typically requires low relative humidity (RH), atmospheric salt particles are often assumed to be aqueous throughout much of their atmospheric lifetime. Here we use a long working distance optical trap to examine heterogeneous efflorescence that occurs when a supersaturated salt droplet comes into contact with a solid particle. We compare our findings for pure salt droplets with those obtained for salt/organic droplets where the organic may be found either in a core shell structure or as an amorphous/glassy solid. We find that in many cases, single collisions with a range of nuclei promote efflorescence at relatively high RH, causing salt particles to be solid for more of their atmospheric lifetime. Similar experiments are proposed in the future to examine the role of contact in ice cloud nucleation."

This seminar is remote only. Please contact Anne for the link to access the session. Note that this seminar begins at 12:40 PM.

Presenter: Michael Koontz
Topic: Understanding Where Wildfires and Insects Kill Trees Using Drones and Satellites

Register for this FREE event.

About the series: The CIRES/NOAA Science-at-Home Virtual Speaker Series runs at 1pm Tuesdays and is designed to show young students at home the work being done at CIRES and NOAA, and offer recommendations to activities that can be done at home to reinforce learning

ESOC virtual coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am on Wednesdays. We will be meeting remotely on Zoom. Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

Organic nitrogen chemistry: Recent results and future projects

Eleanor Browne,
ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"Organic nitrogen is a ubiquitous atmospheric component that affects biogeochemistry, air quality, and climate. Assessing the impact of organic nitrogen on these processes remains challenging because traditional measurement techniques have lacked the sensitivity and chemical resolution to characterize the speciation and chemistry of organic nitrogen. Here, I will discuss measurements made with protonated ethanol cluster chemical ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry during the Holistic Interactions of Shallow Clouds, Aerosols, and Land-Ecosystems (HI-SCALE) campaign at the Southern Great Plains research station in Lamont, Oklahoma. As the site is located in an agricultural region, reduced nitrogen compounds are prevalent. I will present measurements of novel compounds including imines and urea and will discuss the sources and sinks of compounds at this site. Finally, I will discuss research opportunities in our group."

and

Small molecules in the Anthropocene: Wildfires, Oceans and Iodine

Rainer Volkamer,
ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"The Volkamer group develops advanced optical instrumentation (in situ and remote sensing) to measure small molecules and aerosols that are relevant to public health and climate. We seek to better quantify and understand emissions of small molecules, total carbon, and aerosols from natural and managed ecosystem (e.g., wildfires, oil & natural gas, ocean surface, UTLS), and develop a molecular level understanding of the fundamental processes that affect their chemical transformations and sinks (e.g., new particle formation). Opportunities for graduate research exist in the areas of 1) field measurements using research aircraft (i.e., BB-FLUX, TI3GER projects), 2) laboratory experiments of nanoparticle formation and growth (incl. at CLOUD/CERN), and 3) instrumentation to study carbon closure, and retrieve aerosol optical properties."

Please note that this seminar starts at 12:40 PM. Contact Anne.Handschy@colorado.edu for Zoom link.

Presenter: Joshua Schwarz
Topic: Fires! Smoke! Airplanes! Action! How We're Learning About Wildfires and Crop Burning Smoke.

Register for this FREE event.

About the series: The CIRES/NOAA Science-at-Home Virtual Speaker Series runs at 1pm Tuesdays and is designed to show young students at home the work being done at CIRES and NOAA, and offer recommendations to activities that can be done at home to reinforce learning

ESOC virtual coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am on Wednesdays. We will be meeting remotely on Zoom. Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.

Presenter: Mel Zhang
Topic: Seismology: What It Is and How I Got Into It

Register for this FREE event.

About the series: The CIRES/NOAA Science-at-Home Virtual Speaker Series runs at 1pm Tuesdays and is designed to show young students at home the work being done at CIRES and NOAA, and offer recommendations to activities that can be done at home to reinforce learning

ESOC virtual coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am on Wednesdays. We will be meeting remotely on Zoom. Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest.