A new study, led by Dr. Charles Stanier, focuses on the life cycle of tiny particles found in the air, which grow due to chemical reactions within the atmosphere. These particles influence clouds, weather, climate, and the movement of heat and light in the atmosphere.

These findings were published online January 3 in Atmospheric Environment.

This research was a collaboration between the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, IIHR—Hydroscience & Engineering, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"My memberships in IIHR were critical for this, as they helped with logistics, grant accounting, and with outfitting our custom field trailer," says Stanier, associate professor in chemical and biochemical engineering and senior author on the paper. "My collaborations with the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) help in that I get to interface with others who study climate, and the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center (EHSRC) and Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination (CHEEC) allow me to interact with researchers studying pollution health effects. The Chemistry and IIHR shops assist us with instrumentation.

"Our data analysis and computer simulations are helped by computing infrastructure in engineering, IIHR, CGRER, and the University High Performance Computing Cluster." 

Graduate students Ashish Singh and Robert Bullard were instrumental in this study.