Research Projects

Terrestrial plants emit 80% of the organic gases into the atmosphere that drive the chemical formation of hazardous air pollutants. These gases rapidly oxidize, leading to the formation of ozone and particles, which pose risks for human health and impact Earth’s climate by acting as greenhouse gases, scattering light, or serving as cloud condensation nuclei.

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The increased frequency and intensity of drought, heat, and herbivory stress caused by global warming stresses plants, changing the composition and amount of gases they emit. However, the overall direction of this change and the resulting impact of stressed forest emissions on the Earth’s atmosphere is unknown. Significant knowledge gaps include the effects of combined stressors and of stress impacts at the real-world ecosystem scale on emissions and oxidation products. This current state of knowledge, mainly based on limited laboratory investigations, makes it virtually impossible to predict impacts of plant stress on air quality and climate.

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How will plant emissions impact future air quality under climate change while the switch to renewable energy reduces anthropogenic emissions? The project “ClimStress” addresses this question by a unique combination of chamber and field measurements with novel instrumentation that can characterize gases and particles in unprecedented comprehensiveness. Linking a plant chamber with a state-of-the-art atmospheric oxidation chamber, we will investigate how combinations of multiple stressors impact tree emissions and their atmospheric oxidation towards air pollutants. The first airborne emission measurements on board a Zeppelin airship will enable us to quantify ecosystem-scale emissions along a gradient of stressed towards less-stressed forest. Thus, "ClimStress" will provide crucial input for accurate modelling of atmospheric chemistry and air quality, and thereby help reduce the uncertainty in future air pollution and climate predictions.