Events Calendar

Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar

Speaker: George Ban-Weiss, Postdoctoral Research Associate , Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Talk Title: Aerosols: From the Tailpipe to Climate Change

Abstract:

Aerosols are fine suspensions of liquid droplets and solid particles that exist in a vast variety of shapes, sizes, and compositions in Earth’s atmosphere. Aerosols can cause adverse health effects, degrade visibility, soil buildings and materials, damage crops, and alter Earth’s energy balance leading to climate change.

Aerosols are known to be an important cause of climate change, but the magnitude of the change is highly uncertain. The effect of aerosols on climate depends on many factors; some particle species cause global warming and some cause cooling. Black carbon aerosols absorb solar radiation and are widely thought to be the second most important cause of global warming after CO2. I will use results from global climate model simulations to show that the climate effect of black carbon is highly dependent on its altitude in the atmosphere. Black carbon at some altitudes can even cause global cooling despite the fact that they increase atmospheric absorption of sunlight.

Motor vehicle emissions are an important source of aerosols. Quantifying vehicle emissions using traditional laboratory methods can be challenging due to the need to extrapolate from a small sample of vehicles to the entire in-use population. This seminar will discuss measured aerosol emissions from a large sample of individual on-road heavy-duty diesel trucks. The statistical distribution of aerosol emissions from diesel trucks (i.e. the relative importance of high-emitters as a source of vehicle-related pollution), and the potential climate implications of diesel particle filter retrofit programs will be explored.

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209 Conference Room

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes