Project Agricultural aerosol emissions Program DUIRI - Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship Term Summer 2023 Status Accepted Research Area Atmospheric science, Environmental science, Chemistry, Physics Description Agricultural lands account for about 38 percent of global land surface, with a third of it being croplands, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Yet few previous studies have focused on particulate emissions from farm activities. Particulate emissions into the atmosphere interact directly with the solar radiation, as well as, influence cloud physical and chemical properties, thereby impacting the planet's climate. Additionally, particles in the atmosphere also affect the local and regional air quality. This multi-disciplinary project is a collaboration between EAPS (Dr. Cziczo and Dr. Prabhakar) and Chemistry (Dr. Alexander Laskin) faculty, aimed at investigating the potential of farm activities to influence cloud properties by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), or ice nucleating particles (INPs). Several instruments, including the Cloud Condensation Nuclei Spectrometer and Spectrometer for Ice Nucleating Particles, were deployed at Purdue’s Agricultural Center for Research and Education (ACRE) from May to November, 2021. A preliminary analysis of data (published in the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, Vol. 12) included case studies of three days during the harvest season. It showed the presence of INPs on days of harvest and work at the granaries. This was likely the activation of organic and biological particles injected into the air from harvest-related farm activities. Although the small sample size of INPs limited a statistically rigorous conclusion, the results from this case study agrees with previous findings. The CCN spectrometer on-site has a large data set. A statistical analysis of this data could provide valuable insight into the influence of agricultural particulate emissions on clouds. Supervisor Gouri Gouri Prabhakar Mentor Type of work required Computational data analysis and graphical representation of data Websites https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jpur/vol12/iss1/11/ Qualifications The student must have completed at least 1 year of undergraduate program in atmospheric science, chemistry, physics, or in a related field. They must be very comfortable with programming (MATLAB/Python/R), data analyses and graphical representation of data. The student must also have a minimum G.P.A of 3.0. Credit Hours 3 Weekly Hours 40 (estimated)