Chemist Swarup China studies the morphological and optical properties of atmospheric aerosols, atmospheric aerosol chemistry, and heterogeneous ice nucleation.
(Photo by Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL’s) large-scale user facilities and advanced instrumentation capabilities are pushing the frontiers of knowledge and taking on some of the world’s greatest scientific challenges. This includes managing the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, two Department of Energy (DOE) scientific user facilities that house specialized, world-class scientific instruments and capabilities for the entire research community.
At EMSL, a national scientific user facility located on PNNL’s campus, scientists seek to gain a predictive understanding of the molecular and atomic processes that control continuous changes underpinning biological and ecosystem functions. Studying nature at the molecular level provides EMSL researchers with critical information about the drivers of large-scale environmental functions. By bringing together approximately 650 scientific users annually from academia, national labs, and industry, EMSL applies molecular-level research in the areas of atmospheric aerosols, feedstocks, global carbon cycling, biogeochemistry, subsurface science, and energy materials toward environmental and energy production challenges. Scientists can propose research that utilizes any of EMSL’s 100+ experimental instruments—including mass spectrometers, microscopes, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, and surface characterization tools—or its high-performance supercomputer, typically at no cost through a variety of proposal opportunities.
The ARM user facility is a multi-laboratory, scientific user facility and a key contributor to national and international climate research efforts. It provides the climate research community with strategically located in situ and remote-sensing observatories around the world designed to improve the understanding and representation, in climate and Earth system models, of clouds and aerosols as well as their interactions and coupling with the Earth’s surface. ARM operates more than 450 instruments that collect data at locales spanning diverse climate regimes and freely provides data to the worldwide research community to support the study of the interactions among clouds, aerosols, precipitation, and the surface energy balance.
PNNL research staff manage the overall technical direction for ARM and provide leadership for key facility elements, including the aerial facility, engineering processes, multiple instrument classes, data product development, communications, and procurements. PNNL is one of nine DOE national laboratories contributing to the management and operation of ARM.
Both EMSL and ARM make up PNNL’s large-scale user facilities and advanced instrumentation capability in support of the Biological and Environmental Research program for the DOE Office of Science.