Environmental Chemistry 2024

  Emily Hong News Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/climate/tonga-volcano-climate.html Journal Article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq2299 Volcanic eruptions are notable for the release of aerosols made up of ash and sulfate (Science Direct). These aerosols cause chemical changes in the stratosphere, 12-53 km above surface, that affect climate change and chemical composition (NOAA). Usually the aerosols cause a temporary cooling effect on earth’s surface because they reflect sunlight away from earth’s surface. Volcanoes rarely release enough water vapor into the stratosphere to be notable. The stratosphere holds very little water vapor. However, the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, an underground volcano, spewed 50 tera-grams of water vapor into the stratosphere. The news article written by the New York Times titled The Tonga Volcano Shook the World. It May Also Affect the Climate discussed the effect of water vapor injected into the str...

Teresa Lee News Article Journal Article : Bacterial and Chemical Evidence of Coastal Water Pollution from the Tijuana River in Sea Spray Aerosol Coastal water pollution (CWP) is the result of sewage and runoff from storms entering coastal waterways, affecting local populations and could lead to a rise in global illnesses through direct contact with the water. Contaminants include plastics, drugs, insecticides, and pathogenic viruses. 1-3 A pathway to the spread of disease is through sea spray aerosol (SSA) exposure, where seawater aerosols containing various chemical compounds and pathogens are ejected into the air from bursting bubbles via crashing waves and precipitation. 4 A persistent site of concern regarding CWP is between Tijuana, Mexico and Imperial Beach, USA, where untreated sewage flows from the Tijuana River to south Imperial Beach coastal waters at the countries’ borders.  Pendergraft and colleagues identified chemical and bacterial species in coastal water and SSA s...

Abby Ayala CNN Article   (Microplastics could trigger cloud formation and affect the weather, new study suggests) https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/15/weather/microplastic-pollution-weather-study-climate/index.html ES&T Letter   ( Characterization of Microplastics in Clouds over Eastern China) https://pubs-acs-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/full/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00729 Clouds are essentially blobs of droplets that have condensed from water vapor in the atmosphere. Water molecules are too small to easily form droplets themselves, thus hydrophillic particulate matter often act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) to assist in the formation of these droplets. CCN could include species such as dust, salt, or as will be the focus of today’s post, microplastics (MPs, < 5 mm in diameter). Plastics are heavily integrated into today’s society and the degradation of these materials result in MPs that can infiltrate many environmental spheres. MPs can even under long-range atmospheric tr...

Hailey Kempf News Article: https://phys.org/news/2024-05-north-pacific-due-china-aerosols.html  Journal Article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313797121  “Warm blob” events, or marine heatwaves, have occurred in the Northeast Pacific Ocean (NEP) since the early 2010’s. These events are characterized by unusually warm sea surface temperatures (Bond et al 2017). Warm blob events can cause fish die-offs and harmful algae blooms, which in turn can negatively affect marine ecosystems of the Pacific (Smale et al 2019, McCabe et al 2016). These events can also cause millions of dollars in agricultural loss, causing negative socioeconomic impacts (Smith et al 2021). Some previous studies have linked the cause of the warm blob events to the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (Baxter and Nigam 2015) and GHG emissions (Frölicher et al 2018), but because of the periodicity of El Niño and the ongoing warming due to GHGs, Wang et al. wanted to explore the hypothesis that a recent a...

Samuel Greco   Microplastics in our air ‘spiral the globe’ in a cycle of pollution, study finds   CNN Article: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/world/atmospheric-plastics-study-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html   Research Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2020719118#sec-3   Microplastics are a major source of aerosols and have been shown to have adverse effects on human health 1 . Of the plastic that is produced 12-18% ends up back in the environment due to poor governmental management as well as littering 1 . The problem with this is plastic does not simply decompose but rather breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces which eventually become airborne. It is estimated that 22 Gg (22,000 tons) are deposited through the US every year 2 .   In the paper by Brahney, Janice, et al. they discuss how they can use data of atmospheric microplastics along with modeling to identify trends in aerosols deposition, sources, and re-emissions throughout the US as well a...

 Theo Severud CNN Article Scientific Literature Aerosols are solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the gas phase. Some common aerosols include: Sea spray, which can contain salt, organics, and biological species (Schiffer  et al .); Mineral dust, an aerosol formed from wind blowing over deserts and drylands to lift small particles into the atmosphere (Goodman et al .); and Smoke, which can contain carbon-based particles from biomass burning (Schill et al. ). Atmospheric aerosols, also called particulate matter, create a cooling effect on Earth because they are able to reflect light back into space, rather than absorbing it like greenhouse gases. However, these aerosols, especially fine particulate matter (<2.5 um in diameter), also have a large effect on human health because they are able to deeply penetrate the lungs, with prolonged exposure leading to long-term health effects, such as cardiovascular and respiratory issues (Pinkerton et al., Pope and Dockery)....

 Izabella Antczak   News Article: https://www.chipchick.com/2024/09/lightning-actually-strikes-more-frequently-in-skies-that-have-more-air-pollution Journal Article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809524001844   Thunderstorms and subsequent lightning can be predicted with atmospheric variables such as moisture, temperature, and land cover. At different pressure levels, these variables can then inform weather stability, which can be quantified into factors such as convective available potential energy (CAPE). CAPE combined with high concentrations of aerosols can influence the convection of thunderstorms and increase the production of lightning. The news article on ChipChick reports on a paper out of James Madison University by Bentley et al. published in Atmospheric Research. This paper conducted a covariance investigation to inform the relationship between the severity of thunderstorms and aerosol concentrations across two different ur...

  Allison Gatz September 24 th , 2024 Link to news article 1 : https://nypost.com/2024/08/05/lifestyle/majority-of-trees-in-nyc-could-be-making-air-quality-worse-columbia-researchers/ Link to academic journal article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.4c00495 Majority of trees in NYC could be making air quality worse: Columbia researchers                 Isoprene is a biogenic volatile organic compound (VOC) that is present in most trees in New York City.   Although isoprene itself is a gas, it can undergo oxidative reactions with OH radical to form epoxydiols of isoprene or methacryloylperoxynitrate in under low or high NOx conditions respectfully, making it a secondary organic aerosol. These reactions form hydroperoxides, increasing ozone formation. 2   Increased levels of ozone can be detrimental to lung health so it is imperative to research and report factors that...

 Nate Meier News Article:  https://www.dailysabah.com/life/environment/methane-surge-outpaces-all-other-greenhouse-gases-study-finds Journal Article:  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad6463      Methane is the second most impactful greenhouse gas, outpaced only by carbon dioxide, and has a much more potent global warming potential (GWP) potential, >80 times more the first twenty years after release, dropping down to ~30 times more the century following. Methane is produced by both natural (wildfires, terrestrial emissions, etc) and anthropogenic (fossil fuels, agricultural waste, biomass burning, etc) sources, but is also consumed in the atmosphere via various reactions, such as the oxidation of methane to carbon dioxide ( Figure 1 ). This process is accelerated by increased NO emissions, primarily from cars and other vehicles, creating an equilibrium of sorts of methane in the atmosphere.    Figure 1: Graphical summary o...