Environmental and Climate research at Brookhaven National Lab is focused on aerosol chemistry and microphysics, aerosol related infrastructure, climate and process modeling, cloud processes, data management and software engineering, terrestrial ecosystems, meteorological services, and tracer technologies.
Aerosol Chemistry & Microphysics
Focused on improving process-level understanding of aerosol formation and evolution mechanisms, aerosol absorption, and the direct and indirect influences that aerosols have on clouds, precipitation and climate.
Aerosol Related Infrastructure
Provides measurement capabilities to the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program for long-term measurements of aerosols and their precursors across a global network of ground- and aircraft-based locations.
Climate and Process Modeling
Uses multi-scale process modeling and observational analyses to understand the processes essential to clouds, precipitation, land-atmosphere interactions, and urban impacts.
Cloud Processes
Seeks to improve understanding of microphysical and dynamical processes that impact the lifecycle of clouds to improve their representation in climate models.
Technology Development & Applications and Meteorological Services
Responsible for the maintenance, calibration, data collection and data archiving for the weather instrumentation network associated with BNL's atmospheric dispersion concerns.
Terrestrial Ecosystem Science & Technology
Seeks to improve the representation of ecosystem processes in Earth System Models in order to increase our ability to understand and project global change.
Tracer Technologies
The Tracer Technology Group uses perfluorocarbon tracers as a tool for understanding the processes that transport air, heat, water, and pollutants.
Funding Agencies
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SEP
23
Monday
Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar
"Ceria-based nanostructured biomimetic materials and interfaces for sensing and environmental remediation"
Presented by Silvana Andreescu, Clarkson University
1:30 pm, Bldg. 735, Conference Room A, 1st Floor
Monday, September 23, 2019, 1:30 pm
Hosted by: Mircea Cotlet
Cerium oxide nanoparticles or nanoceria have a unique structure and interesting physicochemical properties and reactivity that vary with the size, shape and surface coating. These particles have been traditionally used in catalytic applications in automotive combustion engines, and solid oxide fuel cells, and more recently have been proposed as therapeutic agents in biomedicine. This presentation will discuss properties, characterization and novel applications of a new type of biomimetic cerium oxide nanostructures with regenerative properties and illustrate their potential as active materials for sensing and environmental remediation applications. These materials have tunable redox activity, optical and catalytic properties and can be used to replace enzymes in biological sensing mechanisms, or amplify chemical and biological detection schemes when used in combination with biomolecules. The resulting nanostructures integrate biorecognition, signal amplification and detection capabilities and can function as all-in-one biosensing devices. Design and performance characteristics of several types of ceria-based sensing platforms developed in our lab for point-of-care diagnosis, food quality control and environmental monitoring will be described. The presentation will also show the capability of these materials to function as biomimetic degradation catalysts enabling their use in separation membranes and flow through reactors for environmental remediation. Within this framework, recent work focusing on the development of a mesoporous framework containing highly active ultrasmall cerium oxide nanoparticles will be discussed with an example of application for the degradation of organophosphate agents. These materials have high stability, can be produced in large quantities at a low cost and have demonstrated excellent performance when used in field-deployable devices. Due to their high stability, activity and reusability, the application of these materials can be extend
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SEP
26
Thursday
Environmental & Climate Sciences Department Seminar
"Noise tolerance time-resolved photon counting: Prospects for atmospheric science applications"
Presented by Yong Meng Sua, Stevens Institute of Technology
11 am, Large Conference Room, Bldg. 490
Thursday, September 26, 2019, 11:00 am
Hosted by: Fan Yang
Selective detection of signal over noise is essential to measurement and signal processing. Time-frequency filtering has been the standard approach for the optimal detection of non-stationary signals. However, there is a fundamental tradeoff between the signal detection efficiency and the amount of undesirable noise detected simultaneously. By tailoring the nonlinear process in a lithium-niobate waveguide, we demonstrate highly selective detection of picosecond single photons against broadband noise overlapping temporally and spectrally but in orthogonal time-frequency modes, with performance well exceeding the theoretical limit of the optimized time-frequency filtering. To this end, our technique can achieve signal to noise exceeding by far what's possible with linear optics filters even in the presence of strong background noise, which are highly desirable for many atmospheric remote sensing and imaging applications. Here, we present some feasibility studies in connecting our mode selective detection technique for applications in atmospherics science. Our results and visions may lead to enhanced resolution, sensitivity and detection limit for atmospheric instruments such as lidar and disdrometer.
The Environmental & Climate Sciences Department is part of the Environment, Biology, Nuclear Science & Nonproliferation Directorate at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
