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The unexplored world of aerosol surfaces and their impacts.

Objective

We are changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere, with profound consequences for the environment and our wellbeing. Tiny aerosol particles are globally responsible for much of the health effects and mortality related to air pollution and play key roles in regulating Earth’s climate via their critical influence on both radiation balance and cloud formation. Every single cloud droplet has been nucleated on the surface of an aerosol particle. Aerosols and droplets provide the media for condensed-phase chemistry in the atmosphere, but large gaps remain in our understanding of their formation, transformations, and climate interactions. Surface properties may play crucial roles in these processes, but currently next to nothing is known about the surfaces of atmospheric aerosols and cloud droplets and their impacts are almost entirely unconstrained. My recent work strongly suggests that such surfaces are significantly different from their associated bulk material and that these unique properties can impact aerosol processes all the way to the global scale. Very few surface-specific properties are currently considered when evaluating aerosol effects on atmospheric chemistry and global climate. Novel developments of cutting-edge computational and experimental methods, in particular synchrotron-based photoelectron spectroscopy, now for the first time makes direct molecular-level characterizations of atmospheric surfaces feasible. This project will demonstrate and quantify potential surface impacts in the atmosphere, by first directly characterizing realistic atmospheric surfaces, and then trace fingerprints of specific surface properties in a hierarchy of experimental and modelled aerosol processes and atmospheric effects. Successful demonstrations of unique aerosol surface fingerprints will constitute truly novel insights into a currently uncharted area of the atmospheric system and identify an entirely new frontier in aerosol research and atmospheric science.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2016-STG

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Host institution

OULUN YLIOPISTO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 625,99
Address
PENTTI KAITERAN KATU 1
90014 Oulu
Finland

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Region
Manner-Suomi Pohjois- ja Itä-Suomi Pohjois-Pohjanmaa
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 625,99

Beneficiaries (1)

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