The Chemical Sciences Division of the Material Measurement Laboratory (MML) conducts research in support of the NIST Greenhouse Gas Measurements Program. Project descriptions and contacts are provided here.
| Reference Data for GHG Sensing – (J. Hodges, MML) Goal: to enable SI-traceable, absolute, laser-spectroscopic-based amount-of-substance measurements of greenhouse gases and atmospheric pollutants. |
| Sensor Development: Metrology Tools for Climate Science – (D. Long, MML) Goal: to develop ultra-sensitive, SI-traceable laser measurement techniques for measuring the amount-of-substance of greenhouse gases. |
| Methods and Standards for Measurement of Atmospheric Aerosol Radiative Properties – (C. Zangmeister and M. Zachariah, MML) Goal: to develop methods that facilitate the measurement of aerosol optical properties, apply these measurements to relevant atmospheric systems that improve models of radiative forcing, and develop a transferrable aerosol with known optical properties. |
| Carbonaceous Aerosol Measurements – (M. Zachariah and C. Zangmeister, MML) Goal: to develop methods to decrease the uncertainty in the measurement of particle size, size distribution and shape in order to enable higher fidelity field measurements. In particular improve the accuracy of nanoparticle measurement for standards applications, and extend measurements to provide on-the-fly shape and chemical information. |
| Secondary Organic Aerosols – (S. McGivern, MML) Goal: to identify and characterize chemical processes that affect the interaction of atmospheric organic aerosols with incoming solar radiation. |
| Standard Reference Materials and Gas Metrology – (G. Rhoderick, MML) Goal: to develop suites of SI-traceable, amount-of-substance, primary gas standard mixtures for the key greenhouse gas species that are very accurate with low uncertainties. |
| Seawater Chemistry and Defining pH – (J. Waters, MML) Goal: to establish rigorous traceability for measurements of seawater pH, extending from pH reference standards in artificial seawater certified using primary techniques to spectrophotometric pH measurements of natural seawaters using high-purity sulfonephthalein dyes characterized using quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. |
| Read a summary report of the 2011 Aerosol Metrology for Climate Workshop (PDF) |