Refining atmospheric climate models
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - 10:03
in Astronomy & Space
A long, frustrating search for the source of "extra" aerosols seen in field experiments but not in models might have come to an end when scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Imre Consulting discovered the particles aren't what people thought. The particles are not liquids. Instead, the aerosols, known as secondary organic aerosols (SOA), are solid and evaporate more than 100 times slower than expected. What researchers previously thought takes seconds actually takes days.