Ronald Cohen - Faculty
Professor of Chemistry and EPS
B45 Hildebrand Hall
Berkeley, CA

Phone: (510) 642-2735
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Experiments in Professor Cohen's group address the connection between molecular reactions and regional or global scale atmospheric phenomena: What chemical reactions control whether ozone is locally produced or consumed in the urban and remote troposphere? How do these regional processes affect the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere on a global scale? What are the primary reactions controlling the rate of photochemical removal of ozone in the stratosphere? What are the natural and human induced variations in the concentrations of the free radicals that are rate limiting in these reactions? These questions guide an interdisciplinary chemical/geophysical approach to exploring the structure and dynamics of the earth-ocean-atmosphere system. As part of this effort the Cohen group seeks to develop a detailed mechanistic understanding of the potential for human activity to cause global change.

New instruments will be developed employing solid-state lasers and detectors as the core elements of autonomous, lightweight, compact, electrically efficient sensors for nitrogen oxide radicals, organic nitrates, HF and HCl. These new technologies will be used to obtain precise, spatially and temporally correlated in situ observations from aircraft platforms in remote atmosphere and from ground based sites in urban and remote environs.