Welcome to the Pratt Lab blog! Dr. Kerri Pratt is an assistant professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Earth & Environmental Sciences and faculty associate of the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. We study the chemical interactions of atmospheric trace gases, particles, clouds, and snow, with a focus on the Polar Regions and wintertime environments. Our interdisciplinary research has relevance to climate change, air quality, and human health. As an analytical chemistry lab, we primarily apply novel mass spectrometry techniques to our field research. We invite you to follow our adventures in (and outside!) the lab!

Monday, March 7, 2016

A Tower in Barrow!

The tower is up for our NSF funded atmospheric chemistry study, which is a collaboration with Purdue University and Penn State University.  It only took 4 tries to get it up too!  We finally managed to get it up after taking off some of the weight to be re-mounted when our collaborators from Penn State climbed the tower. Penn State researchers Prof. Jose Fuentes and PhD students Sham Thanekar and Jesus Ruiz-Plancarte worked very hard putting the tower together in the cold, windy environment. It probably also helped that we had a few more hands with PhD student Nate May and freshman undergraduates Alicia Kevelin and Claire Mattson coming in from sampling snow on the sea ice to help push up the tower and take pictures!
The fourth and final attempt at erecting the tower (Photo credit Claire Mattson)
 
Nate May looking happy through the upright tower
Getting this tower up was a huge success!  Since then Jesus Ruiz-Plancarte has very working very hard in the very cold and windy conditions to mount the instruments on the tower.  It will allow us to collect some really great data about the mixing of gasses on the Arctic tundra.  If you want to read more about the process or putting the tower up you can read about it on Angela Raso's Blog.
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