Project Understanding the Effects of Microplastics on Clouds and Precipitation Program Science Term Academic Year 2025 Status Closed Research Area Atmospheric Science, Clouds, Meteorology, Chemistry Description Plastic has become a ubiquitous material in modern day life. The plastics we use, and discard, can take upwards of 500 years to decompose. Even then, the plastic material itself never truly disappears, but rather breaks down in to smaller and smaller pieces. In recent years these small pieces, known as microplastics and nanoplastics, have been found almost everywhere - from the guts and gills of fish in the great lakes, to remote locations like Antarctica and the world's highest peaks. Identifying the role these tiny bits of plastic play in our environment now is key to understanding our changing world and assessing how their role will change with time. In this research we are working towards understanding the role of microplastics in two ways. The first is the identification and quantification of microplastics from rain and snow collected in the Greater Lafayette region. In particular we are looking to expand our sample collection, identify plastics by color, morphology, and composition through microscope and SEM images, and link the presence of plastics with rain or snow event meteorological conditions (wind speed, temperature, cumulative precipitation, etc.). Second is identifying how microplastics and nanoplastics become integrated into clouds and precipitation, and the effects that these plastic particles may have on cloud microphysical processes (that is, when, where, and how clouds form) through laboratory studies. In particular we are looking to conduct experiments on the ice nucleation properties of plastics collected from rain and snow samples and compare collected microplastics with laboratory made and processed microplastics. This project is open to summer participation should the student be interested and accepted into the OUR summer program. Supervisor Alexandria Vincenza Johnson Mentor Type of work required Students will aid with rain and snow sample collection in the field (collection site located at Purdue ACRE) and conduct related activities and data analysis. What exactly these activities and data analysis look like will depend on the students background as there are a myriad of possibilities for involvement. Some examples - Analyzing, plotting, and finding trends meteorological data for comparison with, and understanding of, trends in microplastic data for individual rain or snow events; Preparing microplastic residual samples from collected rain and snow samples with follow up microscope and/or SEM identification and quantification of microplastics; Conducting ice formation studies with a droplet freezing array and/or electrodynamic balance to analyze nucleation properties of collected and/or lab made microplastics. Websites Primer on microplastics - https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/microplastics/
NIH microplastics overview - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9135010/
Information on the Purdue ACRE site - https://ag.purdue.edu/department/agry/acre/index.html
Supervisor's website - https://avjohns.wixsite.com/johnsoncloudlab
Qualifications Students should be in good standing within their departments and have a GPA of 3 or higher. Students with relevant technical skills (wet lab experience, programming, statistics and data analysis) are preferred. Some knowledge of atmospheric processes is helpful but not required. Student must have their own mode of transportation to get to ACRE field site or be willing to utilize public transport to do so. While the all research endeavors will be guided by the supervisor and mentor, students will need the ability to work independently and report their findings. Credit Hours 1 Weekly Hours 3 (estimated)