NSF CAREER Award, Ministry of Energy grant for the investigation of atmospheric gases

“Our idea of ​​air pollution is black smoke that rises from a chimney or an exhaust pipe,” says Gabriel Isaacman-VanWertz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “But the truth is, it’s a lot more complicated.”

The atmosphere behaves like a giant chemical reactor powered by the sun, explained Isaacman-VanWertz, and important air pollutants like ozone and particulate matter are mostly products of this chemistry. Gases emitted from natural sources mix with emissions from human activities and “boil” in the atmosphere. Precipitation has the potential to wash out these gases before the chemistry produces ozone and particulate matter, but the process is not yet well understood, he said.

Isaacman-VanWertz received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and a grant from the Department of Energy Early Career Research Program to quantify the removal of these gases from the atmosphere, better understand how fast this process occurs, and its implications on the air concentration to estimate environmental pollution around the globe. “We hope this will lead to improved models and better predictions of regional air quality,” he said. His research can also provide fundamental insight into the effects of different types of emissions on atmospheric chemistry.

These five-year scholarships are the agencies’ highest honors, given to young professionals to drive advances in education and research.

Isaacman-VanWertz has been studying the interaction of the atmosphere with organic compounds for several years. In 2018, he was the lead scientist of a study published in Nature Chemistry that established a method for tracking reactions between air and carbon-based compounds. This was the first time this was done by researchers and aimed to study pollution, smog, and haze in a way backed by data depicting a compound’s behavior over time. However, this project led him to the question of whether processes that could not easily be recorded in the laboratory, such as precipitation from precipitation, happened quickly enough or often enough to disrupt the sun-driven chemistry and reduce the amount of air pollution formed. Realizing that there wasn’t much data on this, he envisioned a project to fill this gap by measuring the leaching of gases in real and laboratory-generated rainstorms. He also realized that there is a Department of Energy-backed network of measurements around the globe that could be useful in understanding the global effects of rain on pollutants.

Isaacman-VanWertz will measure the concentrations of reactive organic gases in an established forest area and in Blacksburg, which make up most of the reactivity of the atmosphere and have the greatest potential for aerosol formation. He will also build a chamber to simulate rain events and measure how they wash out gases. “As far as I know, this is something that has never been done before, but I did a lot of modeling and reading to make sure it was possible,” he said. Using data from the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Network, he will estimate how quickly these gases are washed out around the globe and model how this process affects the formation of pollutants.

He hopes the research will contribute to scientific understanding in a number of disciplines, from ecology to public health to climatology. In addition, the aim is to translate the core scientific questions into a variety of materials to interact with the public. The NSF scholarship will support collaboration with regional partners to bring its science to the public and provide valuable public outreach opportunities and broad engagement.

“One of the main focuses of my laboratory is the development of new methods and approaches for state-of-the-art instrumentation and cheaper tools to make atmospheric measurements more available,” he said. As part of the NSF grant, online educational materials and hands-on activities are developed and shared through museum programs and events on campus. He will be working with the Science Museum of Western Virginia to develop an exhibition on the chemistry of the atmosphere for the museum floor as well as some virtual teaching materials.

“I hope this project will help the public develop a new, more realistic picture of the air pollution in their head, of gases and particles boiling together in the atmosphere,” said Isaacman-VanWertz.

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