Claudio Mazzoleni

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LDRD/DR project

Short Biography:

June 2005 - Present: Post-doc Research Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory ISR-2, USA
Los Alamos National Laboratory

2003 - 2005: Post-doc Research Associate, Desert Research Institute of Reno, NV, USA
DRI
1999 - 2003: Graduate Assistant: Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences, Desert Research Institute, Reno, University of Nevada System, USA
UNR
1998 - 1999: Technical Laboratory Supervisor, Ultrafast Spectroscopy Laboratory. Department of Physics of the University of Trento, Italy
Optical Spectroscopy Group

Silicon Photonics Team
1997 - 1998: Research Fellowship, Department of Physics of Trento, Italy
Department of Physics of Trento

Development and charachterization of Materials for Phonics and Optoelecronics Team
1989 - 1995: Laurea in Physics, University of Trento, Italy
Univerista' di Trento

Link to Claudio's short CV (pdf format)

Link to Claudio's selected Bibliography

Research Interests:

Aerosol absorption and scattering measurement in the troposphere

Combustion emission measurements
Aerosol optical properties characterization

Measurements of absorption and scattering by aerosols: How do they offset global warming?

Background: Anthropogenic aerosols, small sulfate and soot particles emitted to the air from fossil combustion, are altering the planetary radiative balance to counter the warming by greenhouse gases significantly. However, their complex composition and multitude of interactions confounds our ability to quantify the role of aerosols in climate change. Sulfate aerosol reflects solar radiation reducing the net amount of energy reaching the ground (direct effect). Increasing concentrations of aerosols, which serve as cloud condensation nuclei, augment the number of smaller water droplets in clouds making them more reflective (first indirect effect) and lower the collision probability, thus inhibiting precipitation and increasing cloud coverage (second indirect effect). These sulfate aerosol effects result in atmospheric cooling partially offsetting the warming by greenhouse gases. In contrast, soot particles, which absorb solar radiation, moderate the atmospheric cooling by sulfates. Furthermore, in reality soot and sulfate particles are mixed with other natural aerosols like sea salt and dust, whose mixing state and properties are ill understood. Soot also influences ice formation increasing high level cloud coverage, which trapps more thermal radiation to warm the atmosphere. The net effect on climate of greenhouse gases, sulfate, and soot aerosols is a complex integral that is not well quantified due to gaps in our knowledge of real world particle optical physical and chemical properties, and their spatial and temporal distributions.

MASE Field Campaign: To study aerosol scattering and absorption properties in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on the California coast and its interactions with clouds, we participated in the MASE (MArine Stratus Experiment) campaign in July 2005 in collaboration with Prof. Seinfeld's Caltech team and with Dr. Pat Arnott from the Desert Research Institute and the University of Nevada Reno. The Desert Research Institute photoacoustic instrument was deployed on board the CIRPAS twin otter airplane for in-situ aerosol absorption and scattering measurements. The data are currently under analysis. A poster regarding some preliminary results will be presented at the fall AGU meeting In San Francisco in December 2005:

Insights from In-situ Measurements of Black Carbon during the Marine Stratus Experiment. Mazzoleni et al. 2005

Future/On-going Research: Our research project will conjoin in situ field observations, laboratory measurements, and process model studies of aerosols to fill key gaps. It will help reduce climate-modeling uncertainties and improve accuracy of future projections to guide our energy policies from urban to global scales.

1)Laboratory work:

Develop accurate calibration and test procedures for the new LANL highly sensitive air-borne photoacoustic (PA) instrument to measure absorption and scattering of mixed soot-sulfate-salt-dust aerosols in the field, and to quantify their net effect on climate realistically.
Perform laser scattering measurements on pure and mixed particles using the unique high angular resolution LANL single particle levitation trap. The measured signal depends on the particles physical and chemical properties, water uptake, shape, soot content and size.

2) Analysis of measurements:

Analyze the complex and rich PA and other chemical and microphysical air-borne data sets collected on polluted and clean clouds during the MArine Stratus Experiment.
Analyze the levitation trap data set to construct robust models for the optical and microphysical properties of mixed aerosols and polluted cloud drops.

3) Field campaigns:

Megacities Impact on Regional And Global Environment campaign (MIRAGE Mexico City, 2006). We propose to acquire real-time airborne data by deploying our PA on board the University of Montana King Air 200 airplane in conjunction with CO, CO2 and particle counters monitors.
Maldives AUAV Campaign-2006, where we propose to deploy our PA at a stationary site on the ground in the Maldives for monitoring absorbing aerosol pollution from the Indian subcontinent.

The data collected in both campaigns will yield vital information on the contributions of urban and industrial anthropogenic and wildfires pollutants emissions on megacities air quality, atmospheric background concentrations of absorbing aerosol and on the transport and fate of pollutants from Mexico and Asia to the United States.

Impact: Accurate measurements of optical and physical properties and concentrations of atmospheric aerosol will help in the development of more accurate satellite retrieval algorithms and will increase climate models accuracy. The data collected in the laboratory and in field campaigns and its analysis will help in increasing national security by directly measuring the transport of pollutants and aerosols from foreign soil to the US.

Conferences:

2nd International Conference on Global Warming and the Next ice Age and Aerosol Workshop on Climate Prediction Uncertainties, Santa Fe' 17-21 July 2006

Abstract: Single scattering Albedo in Mexico City during MILAGRO 2006

Poster: Single scattering Albedo in Mexico City during MILAGRO 2006