Reactivit'Air

In our latest publication, we investigated with total hydroxyl radical (OH) reactivity measurements our understanding of emissions from three tree species found in the boreal forest. The unexplained fraction of the reactivity remain high in some circumstances. We recently published in Biogeosciences the results of our study from 2017, where we analysed the emissions from three different trees with gas chromatographic methods and total OH reactivity instrumentation. We analysed emissions at the branch level with enclosure for birch, spruce, and pine. Our findings are that emissions do vary in amount and composition throughout the growing season and we could show, based on reactivity measurements, that the emissions are not fully characterized chemically. In particular when trees were subject to stress (that was clearly visible with, for instance, browning leaves or needles) the reactivity of the emissions increased a lot and we observed simultaneously an increase of emissions of Green L

Rather than heading to Vienna as I did last year for the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, I attended its online replacement this year: Sharing Geoscience Online ( #shareEGU20 ). As everyone knows, online meetings should happen more often because it's better for the climate and because we do have the technology nowadays to make it happen easily. While some (including scientists) have already been taking advantage of this possibility for a while, the current pandemic is forcing almost everyone else to do the same. As most people, I happen to have been on video calls with a few people to discuss results from my research or plan upcoming measurement campaigns. However, I don't recall participating ever in an online conference before last week. I thought that I would make a short (and extremely subjective) comparison between the in-person and the online versions of the EGU General Assembly. Let me know in the comments about your own experience with this

For many, 2020 will be remembered as quite a unique year, as many around the world are affected by the coronavirus pandemic and stay home for work, schools are closed, and everyone adapt to the unusual situation. In particular, for scientists, 2020 will be the year of the cancellations of not only international conferences, but also measurement campaigns. Last year, I was trying to organise a measurement campaign in Switzerland in 2020 for my projec t, but for various reasons, this was not possible. As an alternative, we decided to bring reactivity instruments (for both OH and ozone reactivity, the very first time this combination has been ever used to our knowledge) to Pallas in the Finnish Lapland in late March. As Anssi and I were preparing for the trip, COVID-19 slowly took on the news' cycle and Switzerland got hit quite badly by the pandemic. Did we just dodged a bullet? I guess we took a lucky decision without knowing. Still the first cases of COVID-19 were reported als