Cynthia Randles
Wesely Award Winner and Princeton Student Examines Impact of Soot on Global Climate Change
2006 Wesely award winner Cynthia Randles studies how carbonaceous particles, like soot and smoke, affect global climate change.
High-resolution version of photo (Please give photo credit to the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.)
Growing up, Cynthia Randles—who as a high school student apprenticed at the Kennedy Space Center—dreamed of one day exploring the universe.
As an adult, Randles is more interested in exploring the atmosphere around us as a climatologist. Winning the 2006 Marvin L. Wesely Distinguished Graduate Research Environmental Fellowship award has helped her do just that.
A doctoral student at Princeton University’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program, Randles studies how carbonaceous particles, like soot and smoke, affect global climate change.
Carbonaceous particles are composed of light-scattering organic carbon, or OC, and light-absorbing black carbon, or BC. They are critical to the atmosphere because they can scatter or absorb the sun's intense rays. They can therefore heat the atmosphere while at the same time cool the surface by blocking the sunlight from reaching it.
Major sources of BC and OC emissions are from combustion processes, mainly fossil-fuel burning, bio-fuel burning, and forest and savannah fires such as those in South America and southern Africa. Randles' research involves trying to understand how the particles might affect global climate change, specifically how they impact clouds and precipitation patterns.
“The aim of my research is to try and reduce uncertainties associated with the particles’ reflective and absorption properties by understanding how sensitive, for example, the response of a global climate model is to these various properties,” Randles explained.
One possible indirect effect of the particles might be to slow global warming because of their effect on the reflectivity of clouds. In fact, OC particles could actually make clouds shinier and thus reflect the sun’s heat back into space, exerting a cooling effect on the climate.
However, Randles pointed out a potential problem with this scenario. “As we clean up the scattering particles in the air to mitigate air pollution concerns, we may be causing more warming if we neglect to clean up the absorbing carbonaceous particles as well,” she said.
Randles’ commitment to unraveling the mysteries that might help further our understanding of global climate change helped her win the 2006 Marvin L. Wesely Distinguished Graduate Research Environmental Fellowship (GREF) presented annually by DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research-Climate Change.
DOE’s Global Change Education Program, which is managed by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, established the Wesely award in 2003 to honor the late Dr. Marvin L. Wesely who was a senior meteorologist and scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and who was an active mentor to GREF Fellows.
Randles has been a GREF Fellow since 2001. The award provides distinction and visibility to the recipient’s research and includes a $200 per month increase in the recipient’s stipend.
“I am very honored to have received the Wesley award because it means that I have earned the respect of those who I respect the most…my advisors, mentors and friends from the GREF program,” Randles said.