Climate Change

Airborne particles modify climate by blocking the sun’s radiation and by changing clouds. Through the development of miniaturized technologies like the ACCESS, Brechtel is helping to supply the tools to better understand the roles of particles in our future climate. In the Earth’s atmosphere, each cloud is made up of billions of tiny droplets, and each drop originally formed on a seed particle by the condensation of water vapor. Clouds that have more numerous smaller drops tend to be more reflective to the sun’s energy – as we emit more particles that can act as cloud droplet seeds, there is a chance that we will make clouds more reflective resulting in a cooling effect on climate. The ACCESS suite of instruments and other measurement tools at Brechtel are used to better understand the role of aerosols and clouds in a changing climate.