Atmospheric Aerosol, Air Quality and Climate Change

Prof. Douglas R. Worsnop

15:00, 3 September, 2014

LAPC Meeting Room, Institute of Atmospheric Physics

Abstract:

Atmospheric aerosol continues to contribute the largest uncertainty to predicting future global warming and climate change according to the latest IPCC 2013 report. At the same time, correlation of aerosol loading and human mortality remains the strongest evidence for anthropogenic air pollution health effects. In the 21stcentury, increasing aerosol loading in Asia is degrading air quality even as decreasing emissions in North America and Europe are leading to measurable improvements in air quality. These issues will be discussed in terms of fundamental aerosol chemistry and microphysics – and their measurement and observation.

Speaker's bio:

Douglas R. Worsnop received his PhD in chemistry from Harvard University (1982), was a Humboldt Fellow in Physics at the University of Freiburg, Germany, joined Aerodyne Research, outside Boston, in 1985. Now Vice-President (2000), he also has been FiDiPro Professor of Physics at the University of Helsinki since 2007. A Fellow of AAAS, AGU and AAAR, winner of the Benjamin Liu Prize for Aerosol Instrumentation (AAAR) and the Yoram Kaufmann Award for Unselfish Cooperation in Research (AGU), he has over 350 publications in chemical kinetics and aerosol chemistry, specializing in laboratory and field studies of heterogeneous interactions of gases and aerosol particles.