International Research Fellow Awards: Chemical Characterization of the Inorganic Material in Individual Snowcrystals Using SEM/EDS and SIMS

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9704208 Ehrman The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. Sheryl H. Ehrman to work with Dr. Urs Baltensperger at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland. The Institute has strong programs in glacier and ice core research. This project will study snow crystals using a scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to gather information on how concentrations of chemical species in ice relate to concentrations of chemical species in the atmosphere. By studying ice cores, they can find evidence of past volcanic eruptions, nuclear weapons tests, and past global heating/cooling cycles. The selected site is ideal for this research, not only because of its geography, but because the Monte Rosa glacier which will be studied, is a cold glacier, the temperature of which never rises above zero, thus avoiding melting which can blur the time resolution in the ice core samples. ***