An Investigation of Interhemispheric Differences in Aerosol Physicochemistry in the Equatorial Pacific

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During the past few decades observed increases in atmospheric concentrations of certain trace species (eg. CO2, O3, CH4, etc.) have resulted in a growing awareness of man's potential to perturb his environment on a global scale. Consequently, this decade has seen increased efforts to identify and understand the properties of the remote atmosphere and the processes relating the sources, transformations and removal of the constituents that are present. This kind of investigation involves measurement of the particle and gas phase species of interest in conjunction with the environmental and meteorological parameters known to influence their behavior. Understanding these processes is essential to assessing the importance of various issues of current environmental concern. These include 1) the role of clouds on climate, 2) the role of aerosol and gases in atmospheric radiative transfer and 3) the geochemical cycling of atmospheric constituents. Any investigation of these issues requires a knowledge of the relative influence of anthropogenic, "natural" continental and marine contributions. This research project will support the analysis of data collected from: 1) the recent Central Pacific Atmospheric Comparison Experiment (CPACE) aboard the NCAR-Electra aircraft was intended to intercompare and evaluate recently developed techniques for measuring gas and aerosol species at low concentrations. Size-resolved aerosol information will be combined with the measurements of other CPACE investigators for the characterization of our atmospheric observations and to complete the proposed evaluation of aerosol inlet losses; and 2) measurements of aerosol physicochemistry and optical properties during five equatorial transects currently obtained as part of the Soviet-American Gas and Aerosol Experiment Three (SAGA III) the equatorial Pacific between Hawaii and Samoa in spring of 1990.