Reactivit'Air

Figure 1. Wall projection in the Think Corner of the University of Helsinki during INAR Climate Festival (Picture: Arnaud Praplan, CC-BY-4.0 ) The INAR Climate Festival took place on 25 May in the Think Corner of the University of Helsinki. It was a large event meant to inaugurate the new Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) and present its important research to society.  Among the guests for the inauguration were former President Tarja Halonen, Jukka Kola (Rector of the University of Helsinki), Kaarle Hämeri ( Chancellor of the University of Helsinki) , Juhani Damski ( FMI Director General) , Jari Gustafsson ( Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment) and Erja Heikkinen (Science Adviser at the Ministry of Education and Culture), displaying the many connections and large impact of INAR in society: education, research, business. All guests were stressing how INAR is an important platform to understand and po...

International collaboration is a cornerstone of modern science. This is why funding agencies generally make mobility an important part of any funding application. Academy of Finland is not different and my Academy Research Fellow project includes several instances of mobility. As I was preparing my proposal including ozone reactivity measurements, I was made aware of the unpublished work from Prof. Detlev Helmig and his team on this topic at the  Atmospheric Research Laboratory (ARL) , part of the  Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After contacting Prof. Helmig, he agreed to host a laboratory visit in order for me to get familiar with their method. As the project got funded, the visit was settled for the beginning of 2018. Therefore, after visiting Prof. Matsumoto in Tokyo , I embarked on another trip, this time to the United States of America, and this time together with Anssi . I stayed for three weeks the...

Today we are pleased to welcome M.Sc. Anssi Liikanen as a new member of the Air Quality group at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Anssi starts his PhD studies during which he will develop ozone reactivity measurements and conduct field measurements. As a part of my  REAC-FORTE  project (Academy of Finland, grant 307797 ), ozone reactivity will be used as a tool to assess our understanding of tree emissions and air chemistry in forest air at high latitude (Finland) and high altitude (Switzerland). Biogenic volatile organic compounds emitted by vegetation, such as isoprene and monoterpenes, have a double carbon-carbon bond in their structures, enabling reaction with ozone. By comparing the total ozone reactivity with the reactivity expected from known emissions in combination with other measurement techniques, we will be able to know how much of the chemical composition of forest air is still not well understood. Anssi's background in atmospheric sciences with a focu...