The international Panel on Climate Change recognizes atmospheric aerosol as the dominant source of uncertainty in current estimations of anthropogenic radiative forcing. Work which advances our knowledge of aerosol climate effects examine processes such as particle growth from clusters, aging of aerosol precursor in the gas phase or particle phase, loss processes, impact on cloud lifetime and albedo as well as (and arguably most importantly) aerosol optical properties. It has been well established that particle size, chemical composition and morphology have a large impact on its single scattering albedo (SSA) which is a measure of a particle's ability to scatter instead of absorb light. To assist field and laboratory studies in characterizing absorbing aerosols like black and brown carbon, the Okumura group is developing a portable aerosol photoacoustic spectrometer.
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