Think of prenucleation clusters as the very beginning stages of aerosol formation, or the precursor to clouds. Secondary aerosols, Shields said, are spawned from small molecules in the atmosphere via gas-phase reactions, as opposed to primary aerosols that enter the atmosphere directly from sea spray, dust, smoke, biomass and industrial and agricultural activities. Secondary aerosols comprise approximately half of the aerosols in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
Shields explains that gas-phase complexes, i.e., prenucleation clusters, are bound together through relatively weak intermolecular forces, giving rise to copious clusters of molecules in the stratosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a bunch of different molecules in the atmosphere, figuring out which molecules will form prenucleation complexes that eventually lead to aerosols is extremely difficult,\u201d Shields said, \u201cand it is impossible to do this through experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"white](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2024\/10\/conor-bready-24-new-by-jeremy-fleming-400-1.jpg\")
Conor Bready ’24. Photo: Jeremy Fleming.<\/p><\/div>\n
Enter high-throughput computational chemistry<\/a>, which gives scientists the computing muscle required to quickly parse the different pathways for early-stage cloud development.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest difficulty in large global warming computer models is the uncertainty related to what aerosols or clouds are doing to cool the planet,\u201d Shields said. \u201cSo, it is essential to understand how aerosols form, which means it is essential to understand how prenucleation complexes form. Aerosols grow into clouds, and clouds help cool the planet by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space.\u201d<\/p>\n Olivia Longsworth \u201925. Photo: Nathan Gray.<\/p><\/div>\n The grant builds on a vein of research Shields and recent graduate Conor Bready<\/a> \u201924, Olivia Longsworth<\/a> \u201925 and others published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A<\/a> and Environmental Science: Atmospheres<\/a>. The funds from NSF\u2019s Environmental Chemical Sciences<\/a> division will enable Shields to work with four students per summer over the next three years in his computational chemistry lab. Shields\u2019 crew will also collaborate with scientists at Stony Brook University and the University of California, Irvine who will lend their own experimental data to Shields\u2019 findings.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m excited my students will have a chance to interact with experimentalists at Stony Brook and UC Irvine to learn more about how science is done,\u201d Shields said. \u201cTeams are better than individuals, and learning how others think about the same phenomenon always leads to greater understanding and advances research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Furman Professor of Chemistry George Shields and students in his lab unravel the mysteries of stratospheric cloud formation. A grant from NSF underscores the importance of the work toward understanding clouds and their impact on global warming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":34321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,53,2711,35,61,55],"tags":[1518,2036,2918,1909,3028,3024,3025,3026,3029,3027],"class_list":["post-34320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-chemistry","category-engaged-learning","category-parent-news","category-the-furman-advantage","category-undergraduate-research","tag-climate-change","tag-cloud-formation","tag-clouds","tag-global-warming","tag-irvine","tag-prenucleation-clusters","tag-prenucleation-complexes","tag-secondary-aerosols","tag-stony-brook-university","tag-university-of-california"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34320"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34346,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34320\/revisions\/34346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"white](\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/218\/2024\/10\/Olivia-Longsworth-25-400-new-crop.jpg\")