Climate Change Monitoring
Long-term monitoring is needed to reveal climate change impacts. From UAVs to ground sites, measurements extend our understanding and improve models. Learn more about climate change and monitoring needs from the experts at NASA.
Global climate change will likely be the defining issue of the twenty-first century. Although most of us know about the warming by CO2, fewer people are aware that airborne particles can also alter climate by interacting with the sun’s energy. Particles can cool climate by directly blocking the sun’s energy from reaching the Earth’s surface. They can also affect climate by acting as the seeds for cloud droplets and changing how reflective clouds are to the sun’s energy. It turns out that where in the atmosphere particles act as cloud seeds determines whether the altered cloud will have a cooling or a warming effect on climate.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy have invested in several of Model 3100 HTDMA systems to monitor changing particle properties in the atmosphere so climate modelers can better simulate our changing climate. To monitor the water uptake properties of airborne particles they turned to Brechtel to provide a solution that could be deployed for years at various field sites.
Through the development of new hygroscopic growth measurement technologies like the HTDMA, Brechtel is helping to supply the tools required by scientists to better understand the roles of particles in our future climate.