Research:

Isotopic Tracking of Atmospheric Aerosols

Research over the past decade has highlighted the importance of intercontinental transport and exchange of atmospheric aerosols, including soil-derived dust and industrial pollutants. These far-traveled aerosols are detrimental to air quality, and can affect climate through atmospheric radiative forcing and impacts on cloud formation and precipitation patterns. The contribution of Asian derived material to atmospheric aerosols in California has now been recognized not just as an episodic event, but also as a persistent phenomenon.

Understanding how changes in industrial and land-use activities in Asia affects the source, composition and transformation of Asia derived aerosols will be important for predicting present and future effects on California climate and air quality. We are using combined isotopic fingerprinting (87Sr/86Sr, 143Nd/144Nd, Pb isotopes) as an additional and more discriminating tool for tracing the sources of aerosol components and their variation in time, including the identification and apportionment of local and far-traveled Asian dust, and industrial pollutants.