Luciana Rizzo

Scientist
TIIMES - ACD - ASP
BGS

Contact Information:
PO Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307-3000
Office: FL0 - 3530
Telephone: 303-497-1870
Email: lrizzo@ucar.edu
Home Page

Project Summary:

Click on picture to view the entire figure.

Aerosol measurements at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS), Michigan June 2007

I started an Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) & Advanced Study Program (ASP) post doctoral fellowship in January 2007, with a research plan scoped inside ACD and TIIMES. Since then, I have been studying aerosol processes in natural environments, through the implementation of field campaigns and laboratory experiments.

Luciana Rizzo focuses her research on biogenic aerosols. Aerosol particles influence climate as they interact with solar radiation, and may also affect cloud properties and photochemical reaction constants at the troposphere. Understanding those effects requires detailed information about aerosol sources and sinks. By means of field campaigns and laboratory experiments, Luciana has been studying aerosol processes such as emission, deposition, growth and new particle formation in natural environments.

Click on picture to view the entire figure.

Development of a new chamber facility to study biogenic aerosol nucleation processes.

This summer a field campaign was conducted at a hardwood forest in Michigan at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS - figure on the right), with the objective to characterize physical properties of the local aerosol population, as well as to measure aerosol turbulent fluxes. The data set is been analyzed now, and may provide information about local aerosol biosphere-atmosphere exchanges, nucleation and growth processes.

Working with collaborators in ACD, she has developed a new smog chamber facility (figure to the left) for research on new particle formation from the oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC). Her specific interest on those chamber studies is to reproduce some of the conditions seen in the Amazon forest: high VOC emissions from the vegetation, elevated relative humidity, and low nitrogen and sulfur oxides concentrations. Unlike some temperate forests in the world, new particle formation events are not clearly observed in undisturbed areas in the Amazon. Chamber studies may help to understand the limiting factors and threshold concentrations for aerosol nucleation in tropical forests.

As a future plan, there will be a field experiment in the Amazon Forest in January 2008, as a part of BEACHON project. This experiment will be an effort of several research groups around the world to understand the links between aerosol properties, vegetation emissions and atmospheric oxidants. Also, the cloud-forming properties of biogenic aerosols will be investigated, providing a better understanding of the link between biological processes and climate mediated by atmospheric chemistry.

Presentations:

• Measurement of aerosol and VOC turbulent fluxes and in-canopy particle characterization at a pristine forest in Amazonia PPT