Seminar

Abstract

The speakers will give short presentations on

• The new Environmental Chamber Facility at CU: design, characterization, and possible experiments, Jose Jimenez

An Environmental Chamber Facility has been constructed at CU (CIRES / Chemistry), with the final testing and completion expected by the end of 2015. Four chambers are available: (a) two x 25 m3 chambers with temperature control (~4-40 C), humidity control (~0.01-85% or so), and separately controllable UV and visible light; (b) two 8 m3 chambers with UV light, room temperature, and variable humidity (0.01-50%). A large number of sampling locations, as well as 25 kW of instrument power, and many vacuum, N2, and exhaust ports are distributed throughout the lab, with the goal of making possible larger chamber campaign-style experiments. A "source room" is located adjacent to one of the chambers, to allow injection of exhaust from complex sources (e.g. small biomass fires, small engines, barbecues etc.) into the chamber. Design and characterization data from the chambers, as well as results from initial experiments will be presented.

• Development of H3O+ ToF-CIMS, Bin Yuan

Time of flight (ToF) mass spectrometer is being widely used in atmospheric chemistry studies in the recent years. A ToF chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) was obtained by the Tropospheric Chemistry group of NOAA ESRL CSD in 2014 and some significant modifications to the instrument were conducted to make it workable for H3O+ reagent ion. In this talk, I will present the modification processes and the deployment of the instrument during the SONGNEX aircraft campaign over western U.S. in the spring of 2015. Some new capabilities of the H3O+ ToF-CIMS over traditional PTR-QMS will be also presented.

• FIREX (Fire Influence on Regional and Global Environments Experiment, 2015-2019), Carsten Warneke

The FIREX campaign will study wildfires in the western United States. FIREX will be a multi-year effort, with methods development, small- and large-scale laboratory and field experiments. The results of these activities will yield immediate answers to some of the science questions and will be incorporated into our understanding to provide the necessary scientific background for a large-scale field experiment in 2018 that will have the NOAA WP-3 aircraft at its center and include other smaller platforms. An overview of the planned activities will be presented.