EAGER: A New Method for Sampling Sea-Salt Aerosols

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Sea-salt aerosol form in marine environments from breaking waves, white capping, or bursting bubbles. They remain suspended in the air as tiny droplets and affect visibility. These droplets, known as Giant Cloud Condensation Nuclei (GCCN), are also hypothesized to play a role in cloud and precipitation development. Measurements of GCCN are limited and primarily come from an instrument that requires placement on an expensive research aircraft. This award will allow for the development of a low-cost, 3D-printed instrument that can make measurements of GCCN from kites and unmanned aircraft. The measurements will help to resolve questions about the role of GCCN in the development of clouds and precipitation, which will potentially make an impact on weather and climate modeling. Students will be involved in the design and testing of the system, providing them with hands-on research activities.The research team plans to develop a new, low-cost instrument to measure GCCN. GCCN are extremely efficient nuclei for condensation and rapid growth. Their role in cloud development is still considered an unknown in the cloud physics community. One hypotheses is that GCCN broaden the droplet spectrum and can accelerate precipitation initiation in warm clouds. GCCN are traditionally measured by exposing a microscope slide to the free air stream outside of an aircraft. The research team will develop a miniaturized version of the Giant Nucleus Impactor known as the mini-GNI that can be flown on kites or UASs. Kite measurements are initially targeted due to their ability to perform Eularian sampling at a consistent point over time. Also, multiple instruments can be attached to kites with the option of measuring multiple altitudes. The mini-GNI will be 3D-printed and run using a Raspberry Pi computer. The specific work tasks include testing of the kite setup, the Raspberry Pi system, and the complementary state variable measurements. The entire mini-GNI package will be flown multiple times and the samples will be collected and analyzed.