Bon Voyage, My Friends…

 
Published: 18 September 2013

Editor’s note: Ernie Lewis, principal investigator for the Marine ARM GPCI Investigations of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign, sent this update in August 2013.

The Spirit arrived at the Port of Los Angeles this morning [August 15], completing MAGIC Leg16B. Also concluding last week, the two undergraduate students who worked with me this summer, Danielle Mallon and Michelle Gostic, completed their summer internships.

Danielle Mallon
Michelle Gostic

I’d like to share Danielle’s reflections about her experience this summer:

“The Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer (UHSAS) and the Condensation Particle Counter (CPC) are part of the suite of instruments aboard MAGIC. They measure aerosol concentration (the number of aerosol particles in a given volume), but have different size ranges. I subtracted the UHSAS concentration, which included only particles with diameters greater than 55 nanometers (nm), from the CPC concentration, and particles with diameters greater than 10 nm, to give the concentration of aerosol particles in the intermediate diameter range between 10 and 55 nm. Particles in this intermediate diameter range are often from anthropogenic sources. I did this for all the data from October to December 2012, on Leg03 through Leg07 (the UHSAS was on the ship only during this time). Graphing these variables was important because it was unclear if there were any particles in this diameter region over the ocean, which is far removed from anthropogenic sources. I learned a lot and met awesome and brilliant people. I got to experience how research is conducted professionally in the real world, see really cool facilities, and speak with leaders in the atmospheric chemistry and aerosol science field.”

Thank you Danielle and Michelle for all of your hard work this summer; it was a pleasure having you aboard MAGIC!

Now that Leg16B has ended, MAGIC will journey on to MAGIC Leg17A. I am happy to announce two science riders on this Leg: Mike Jensen and Yuan Gao.

Yuan Gao

Mike Jensen
His first time on a research ship, Mike, a meteorologist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is interested in working with future MAGIC data and directly observing the clouds while at sea. Yuan, who hails from Rutgers University in New Jersey, is an atmospheric chemist with a strong interest in aerosols. She has extensive experience collecting samples aboard ships. We installed her aerosol sampling system on the Spirit in May of this year, just before Leg11. This system collects aerosol particles on filters, which are analyzed later for chemical composition and morphology of the particles.

Here we go! Onward to Leg17A.