Reactivit'Air

After a long journey to get them published, the results of our hydroxyl radical (OH) reactivity measurements in the boreal forest in 2016 are now available in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics . The final manuscript has been substantially modified from its discussion version, mostly to improve its readability and remove unnecessary parts. The most consequential changes did not severely impact our conclusions, though. Here I give a summary of the findings from our study that includes measurements at the SMEAR II boreal forest station in Hyytiälä, Finland, from April to July 2016, as well as modelling results from our colleagues at the University of Helsinki. We found large total OH reactivity values occurred when the soil was thawing after snow melted (late April). These reactivity peaks were even higher than the high total OH reactivity values in summer (July). Comparing the total OH reactivity measured with the OH reactivity calculated from the known chemical composition at

After living here for over six years, I applied for Finnish citizenship in the spring and it was given to me on 21 August this year. In this blog post I am writing down a few personal thoughts about the process, how I feel about Finland, what this means to me now and to which extend it is related to my career. EU-citizenship Figure 1. The author as a newly naturalized EU-citizen visiting the European Parliament in Brussels for the first time. You have no idea how many people were wondering why I would apply for Finnish citizenship as a Swiss citizen. Well, it is true that Switzerland is in the Schengen area (even though it is not part of the EU) and that it was very easy to move to Helsinki in the first place. However, a few years back, before I was awarded my current fellowship, I considered alternative options to work outside of academia and as a chemist, I wondered if I could have worked for the European Chemical Agency (located in Helsinki). Except I couldn't as a Swi

I was recently interviewed by Helen Partti for the journal of my professional union ( Loimu ). The article is part of a series aiming at presenting what scientists do on their free time and how it is part of their work-life balance. I briefly mentioned my involvement in a theatre project in a previous post . Helen and I met on the day of the dress rehearsal for Apologia (by Alexi K. Campbell) produced in collaboration by Soup Troupe and The Really Small Theatre Company . I was the stage manager for this production. We talked for about one hour before the rehearsal and talked about my experience in amateur theatre (since my teenage years), my studies, my career, Finland, Switzerland, atmospheric chemistry, friendship, and possibly even other subjects. Eventually, Helen joined me to the theatre and stayed with us for a while, talking to actors and the director, while everyone was getting ready for the rehearsal. You can access the article (in Finnish) here: https://www.loimu.fi/

This year was my first time at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Even though it felt overwhelming at times, it is also a very stimulating conference including sessions related to important topics beyond scientific topics, such as short courses about various subjects (e.g. peer-review, grants) and more general sessions about scientists' well-being and diversity and equality for instance. The EGU General Assembly (GA) is a week-long conference taking place yearly in Vienna since 2005 (the first GA was in Nice, France, in 2004). It is huge (really!) and brings together over 16'000 scientists (new record this year) from 113 countries representing all fields related to space and Earth Science, such as atmospheric sciences, climate science, oceanography, biogeosciences, cryosphere research, hydrology, seismology, volcanology, planetary science, among many others. As the Atmospheric Sciences division is on of the largest of EGU and as I have be

It is a yearly routine: the temperature slowly increase and there is more light. It is then time to transport our instrumentation to the field! After our measurement campaign in Lapland last year (I wrote about it previously here and here ), this year we are back at the SMEAR II station in Hyytiälä in southern Finland. The SMEAR II station has become a hotspot for atmospheric sciences starting from the mid-1990s. The Finnish Meteorological Institute performs routine measurements there and research is also conducted at the site on Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOCs) and other topics related to air quality. We performed an OH reactivity study at this site in 2016 (which is currently under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, see the open discussion ), which was building on previous studies by Sinha et al. (2010) and Nölscher et al. (2012) . Then, we extended the study period to include the spring and not only summer as the mentioned earlier studies. One result of

Have you ever had that feeling that a day, a week, or a month has just gone by at such a high pace, that you barely grasped the time flying by? This is what just happened to me as I realized that I haven't been writing for this blog since December! Both life at work and outside of work were quite busy, which contributed to me not noticing time passing by so quickly.  At work, I was busy updating and finalizing a manuscript - previously rejected - which is finally available for discussion in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion (open access) journal. Outside work, theatre has been keeping me busy, as I was helping my friends   from Soup Troupe and The Really Small Theatre Company with their production of Apologia by Alexi Kaye Campbell (as stage manager), which is performed these days in Helsinki. As I was reviewing the past few months to analyse why it went by so fast, I remembered also one thing that I did last year, but about which I dot not write on the bl