A research project investigating the role of clouds in nitrogen chemistry has recently been awarded with an Open Competition Domain Science–XL grant (ENW–XL). The research project is titled “Cloud-Aerosol-Interactions in a Nitrogen-dominated Atmosphere (CAINA)”.
Associate professor Ulrike Dusek of the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (University of Groningen) is PI and main applicant of the project. The consortium further consists of researchers from Wageningen University, Utrecht University, TU Delft, as well as foreign partners from Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, the Leibnitz Institute for Atmospheric Research, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. 6 PhD students and two post-docs will work on the project.
Due to high nitrogen emissions from traffic and agriculture, nitrogen deposition has become a serious problem in the Netherlands. In the CAINA project researchers will investigate how clouds convert nitrogen emissions to harmful particulate matter. At the same time, clouds themselves are changed by nitrogen pollutants and this can have cooling effects on the global climate. The researchers will use the advanced instrumentation of the Dutch Ruisdael Observatory and detailed cloud models to investigate both the effect of cloud on nitrogen pollutants and in turn their effect on clouds.
