Gabriel Isaacman

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“Using Detailed Chemical Characterization of Particulate Matter to Understand Aerosol Formation and Oxidation”

Introduced by Professor Allen Goldstein

Atmospheric aerosols are globally responsible for millions of premature deaths annually and are the largest source of uncertainty in climate models. Current models often substantially underpredict aerosols and poorly predict their chemical and physical properties, so a better understanding of aerosol formation processes is needed. My work has focused on developing new tools to resolve and characterize organic aerosols to understand their emission, chemistry, and atmospheric oxidation. Traditional techniques rely on measuring specific “tracer” compounds, for which specific information is known about their emissions and oxidation precursors. The known compounds, however, represent only a very small fraction of the mass in organic aerosols, so my research has focused on developing novel schemes to classify the bulk of organic aerosol while also measuring tracer compounds to quantify aerosol sources. This presentation will discuss the methods and importance of reaching a complete, chemically-faithful description of organic aerosol based on laboratory and field data. Several conclusions will be presented here that have come from fully characterizing the particle emissions from vehicles and the composition of diesel fuel, including estimations of the relative importance of vehicle fuels in the Los Angeles Basin, and improved understanding of emissions in the Bay Area. The application of these tools outside of urban environments to regions dominated by biogenic emissions will be discussed.

One of my favorite aspects above ESPM is the listserv.

I would like to thank my advisor, Allen, and my research group, of course, as well as my ESPM friends, who have helped me write applications, study for my qualifying exam, and plan a wedding – especially Kevi for letting me sleep in her spare room for weeks at a time.