The work of Sara C. Pryor, professor ofearth and atmospheric sciences, focuses on understanding causes of climate variability and change in order to make better projections of future regional and local climates.
“Aerosol particles are the largest source of uncertainty in the science of climate change and prediction, particularly at the regional scale,” said Pryor, who was recently made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “They are important because they can both reflect light and cause cloud formation, so they tend to lead to surface cooling and offset some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases.”
The abundance of these aerosols also has some down-to-earth implications for human health. Millions suffer impaired health due to the effects of aerosol exposure. Given that aerosol particles’ impacts on climate and health are strongly influenced by their size – from 10 times smaller than a typical virus to the width of a human hair – Pryor’s work tracks processes occurring across scales from micrometers to kilometers.
Pryor’s research aims to quantify aerosol concentrations, size and composition in time and space, model their influence on climate, and determine how and where they are removed from the atmosphere. She uses both ground-based and satellite radiometers, in addition to in situ instruments that measure aerosol concentrations and fluxes every second in dozens of size classes. She also conducts simulations using increasingly detailed and sophisticated numerical models.
All of this leads to huge data volumes. For example, Earth Observing Systems operated by NASA generate over four terabytes of data every day. Pryor’s group has recently completed simulations on a 12-kilometer grid across the entire continental United States, with 32 vertical layers through the atmosphere, and simulating the concentration of more than 200 gases and 32 aerosol particle types and sizes. The resulting output is also many terrabytes in size.
“These data volumes represent both an unparalleled opportunity for generating new insights into the function of the atmosphere and interaction with the earth’s surface and for evaluating the models we use for predictions,” Pryor said.
Amanda Garris is the executive editor of periodiCALS.
