Abstract

Starting with chemically-resolved size distributions that our NOAA group measured during the Atmospheric Tomography mission, we can create data sets for species such as sea salt, dust, and smoke. These data sets are used to study aerosol removal from the atmosphere. Sea salt is especially good for this purpose because it has only surface sources and no photochemical removal. The size distributions can also be used to study how various species contribute to optical properties. For example, in the lowermost stratosphere the particles mixing down from above are much more important for optical properties than the particles mixing up from below, even when their overall mass is similar. The size distributions remind us that water uptake is crucial to the optical properties of aerosol particles. Since water content changes upon sampling, this shows the importance of ambient measurements of optical properties, including the sun photometer.

A brief bio-sketch of Dr. Daniel Murphy

Dr. Daniel Murphy works as a scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chemical Sciences Laboratory Boulder, CO USA. He received his BS in Physics from Oberlin College, MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and Ph.D. in Physics in the University of Minnesota. His research interests include single-particle mass spectrometry, global energy budget, microphysics of cold clouds, properties of ice and supercooled water weekly cycles of aerosols stratospheric aerosol layer, and aerosol instrumentation. He has several lead authors research publications in various peer-reviewed scientific journals. He has received several prestigious awards, including

• 2002 US Department of Commerce: Gold Medal for scientific contributions to the third IPCC assessment,
• 2008 American Association for Aerosol Research: Benjamin Liu award for aerosol instrumentation
• 2010 NOAA: Bronze Medal for leadership of airborne Arctic mission
• 2012 American Geophysical Union: Fellow