PMEL-JISAO Atmospheric Chemistry Program Overview

The PMEL-JISAO Aerosol Program is designed to quantify the spatial and temporal distribution of natural and anthropogenic aerosols in the marine atmosphere and to determine the physical, meteorological and biogeochemical processes controlling their formation, evolution and properties. Ship-based transects yield ocean-scale distributions of aerosol chemical, physical, and optical properties. These transects, combined with process and closure studies in collaboration with the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Project's aerosol activities, yield data to develop and test aerosol/climate model parameterizations.

A second activity of the PMEL-JISAO Aerosol Program is the chemical sampling and analysis of daily samples from a ground-based aerosol monitoring network. This network has been established in conjunction with NOAA/Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL) to determine means, variability, and possible trends of key optical, chemical and microphysical properties for a number of important aerosol types.