CUP Undergraduate Research
Title
Optical Properties of Secondary Organic Aerosols
Date of Award
1-1-2014
Document Type
Restricted Access Poster
College
College of Arts & Sciences
Department
Math & Science
Abstract
It is well known that the increased warming effect due to greenhouse gases is a major environmental concern. While the amount of solar radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases is known to a high certainty, the amount absorbed by secondary organic aerosols (SOA) is not. The experimental procedure used to measure the amount of radiation absorbed by SOA was optimized using fulvic acid. The optimized method was then used to measure how much radiation SOA absorb between ~200 and 800 nm. Using this data, mass absorption coefficient (MAC) values at 405 nm and imaginary refractive indexes (k) were calculated. These values will be used to help improve climate models developed at PNNL that currently do not take into account radiation absorbed by SOA.