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The influence of fireworks on the amount of aerosols.

Organization(s):Helen Parkhurst
Country:Netherlands
Student(s):Sanne Streekstra Sander de Beet Eva Janssen Rozemarijn van den Born
Grade Level:Secondary School (grades 9-12, ages 14-18)
GLOBE Educator(s):Maaike Vollebregt
Contributors:Joost Wesseling Hester Volten Leah Williams
Report Type(s):International Virtual Science Symposium Report
Protocols:Aerosols
Presentation Poster: View Document
Language(s):
Date Submitted:02/14/2018
sun sky blue
Our main research question is about the subject aerosols. Aerosols are little pieces dust or parcels, for example soot and water droplets. They are present at all the levels of the air up to the ozone layer. If they are in the bottom layer of the atmosphere, they can cause breathing problems. In that context, they are also known as particulate matter content. The number of aerosols is phrased in AOT. We will measure the AOT with a device called Calitoo, it is a sun photometer. We will compare our measurements with data from satellites.   he health effects of aerosols consist of short-term acute symptoms, such as asthma and bronchitis, and long-term chronic irritation and inflammation of the respiratory tract.  It is known that particulate matter content is increased by the fireworks during New Year's Eve. We don't know if this influences the AOT. When fireworks explode, a lot of particulate matter is released. The size of the air pollution from the fireworks particles in the air depends on the weather conditions. The high number of particles in the air will disappear rather quickly, they mostly do not last long. 


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Comments

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GLOBE Scientist (inactive)
6 Years Ago - Edited
In the report, it is stated that "Aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate". It might not be correct to generalize the effect of aerosols. There are different kinds of aerosols. Some aerosols scatter the short-wave radiation from sun giving a cooling effect whereas there are some aerosols which absorb the radiation and in turn impose warming effect. Also, the atmosphere mainly gets heated by the longwave radiation radiated by the earth surface. Presence of aerosols will act as an obstruction for the radiation to escape into space, resulting in heating of the atmosphere. -- Suryakanti Dutta
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Student 1 of Maaike Vollebregt GLOBE Scientist
6 Years Ago
Dear Suryakanti Dutta,

You're right. There are indeed aerosols which absorb the radiation and aerosols which scatter radation. We mentioned that in the paragraph: What are aerosols? But we forgot to mention it in the next paragraph. You are right that aerosols mostly have a warming effect on the climate. We did have a discussion about this paragraph and we thought we changed it, but we forgot. Thank you for correcting our mistake.

Rozemarijn van den Born
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Sirilak Chumkiew
6 Years Ago
Hi guy! Greeting from Thailand :-)
This is very nice to see you guys are interested in the air pollution problem.
I have some question for you guys, i am just curious

1) The firework celebration was perferomed at night but AOT have to measure during the day. Is that ok to measure the impact of firework on the atmosphere by using Calitoo? What do you think?

2) If i am right, you wrote in the report that there was raining on the day after firework day and also cloudy for a week. Are there still have particle from the firework left? What do you think? either yes or no Why?

Cheers,
Sirilak
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Student 1 of Maaike Vollebregt Sirilak Chumkiew
6 Years Ago
Dear Sirilak,

1) Of course it would be better to measure immediately after the firework celebration, but we did not have a measuring instrument which does measure the AOT at night, I think it would be better to take measurements as soon as possible, but because of the weather we were not able to do that.

2) We were not happy with the weather after New year's Eve. it was not raining, but there was a lot of wind. Since it was storming it is presumably that all the aerosols flew away. We also wrote that as a possible source of error in our discussion.

Thanks for commenting on our report,

Rozemarijn