Environmental Impact of Aerosol Emissions

The environmental effects associated with the injection of an aerosol into the atmosphere depend strongly on the aerosol\u27s evolution, i.e., its duration aloft and the details of its state there. This in turn depends on the aerosol\u27s cloud microphysical properties, e.g., its proclivity for condensation and ice nucleation, its radiative cross section, etc., and this has been the long term focus of our laboratory. Here we show several examples of the application of our cloud microphysics instrumentation towards aerosol injection problems associated with various technological activities: Nuclear winter (scavenging), high speed civil transport aircraft (heterogeneous chemistry), and military aircraft paint stripping (particle characterization and removal). In particular, we describe a mobile aerosol sampler that is suitable for ground based or airborne aerosol measurements. It was flown last November onboard the National Center for Atmospheric Research\u27s Sabrellner research aircraft for cirrus cloud aerosol sampling