Science AMA Series: We are Susannah Burrows and Scott Elliott, atmospheric scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, who developed an approach to simulate

Atmospheric researchers at PNNL (/u/Dr_Susannah_Burrows) and LANL (/u/Dr_Scott_Elliott) worked together to develop a new approach to simulating how microscopic sea organisms known as phytoplankton â€" which includes a mix of algae, bacteria, and other microbes so tiny they are invisible to the naked eye â€" affect chemistry at the ocean’s surface. The mix is constantly made airborne by crashing oceans waves through sea spray, which ultimately impacts cloud properties and the energy balance of the planet. That’s because sea spray can influence the amount of sunlight that clouds reflect away from the Earth and its oceans, which normally act as a heat sink for the planet. A synopsis of this research is at https://www.pnnl.gov/science/highlights/highlight.asp?id=3895, and our paper, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, is available at http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/13601/2014/acp-14-13601-2014.html. If you want to know how sea spray affects the warming and cooli ng of the planet, we’ll answer your questions about the complex interactions of aerosol particles, ocean life and cloud systems, sunlight and precipitation processes â€" all important factors in modeling the Earth’s climate. We will be back at 1 pm EST (10 am PST, 6 pm UTC) to answer questions … Ask us anything! UPDATE: Thanks from Susannah at PNNL! It was a pleasure to interact with you today and share our research. To learn more about our work in atmospheric sciences at PNNL, visit our program page at http://www.pnnl.gov/atmospheric/. To follow PNNL, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter at @PNNLab, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/PNNLgov and Google+ at https://plus.google.com/100922732508111452182. We also have a new newsletter called Currents. Subscribe at http://bit.ly/CurrentsSubscribe. Thanks from Scott at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Read more about Los Alamos' climate modeling work here: http://www.lanl.gov/science-innovation/capabilities/earth-s pace-sciences/climate-modeling/index.php. And you can follow us on Twitter @LosAlamosNatLab and @LANL_Earth Facebook, Flickr, YouTube. We're going to be signing out now, but we might come back and answer more questions if we have time! Thanks for participating, everyone! submitted by Dr_Susannah_Burrows [link] [227 comments]