Denise Assmann

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Denise Assmann for the poster/PICO entitled:

Spatio-temporal aerosol particle distributions in the Upper Troposphere/Lowermost Stratosphere measured by the IAGOS-CARIBIC Observatory (Assmann, D.; Hermann, M.; Weigelt, A.; Martinsson, B.; Brenninkmeijer, C.; Rauthe-Schöch, A.; van Velthoven, P.; Bönisch, H.; Zahn, A.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

I am a PhD student at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (supervisor: Markus Hermann) in Leipzig. In my PhD work I investigate the spatio-temporal aerosol particle distribution and transport processes in the upper troposphere and lowermost stratosphere (UT/LMS) using the the CARIBIC (now IAGOS-CARIBIC) observatory (www.caribic-atmospheric.com) onboard a passenger aircraft. Based on this unique data set, including meteorological analysis, the poster presents representative and statistically significant spatio-temporal distributions of particle number concentrations in an altitude of 8-12 km covering a large fraction of the northern hemisphere. The poster shows the measured values in the different size regimes with respect to sources and sinks in different regions. Additionally, you can see highly resolved latitudinal and longitudinal cross sections of the particle number size distribution, probability density functions and trends in particle number concentrations, but also in elemental composition, determined from our regular measurements over more than a decade.
Moreover, I generated seasonal contour plots for particle number concentrations, the potential temperature, and the equivalent latitude. The results are interpreted with respect to aerosol microphysics and transport using CARIBIC trace gas data like ozone and water vapour. The influence of clouds in the troposphere and the different stratosphere-troposphere-exchange processes is clearly visible.