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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		A better understanding of cloud formation may benefit climate change studies
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-07-06 19:00:00
	Description:		How do researchers study the transient phenomenon of a cloud? In a recent experiment, physical chemist Kevin Wilson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used a kind of chamber to simulate cloud conditions in nature, which meant that cloud droplets could form on aerosolized particles. "We have an instrument in our lab that creates the atmospheric conditions that a cloud would form. And so the experiments are rather straightforward. With the right amount of relative humidity or water vapor in the gas phase and the right temperature, we just put in a known size of aerosol and then we measure the droplet that’s formed on the other end of this instrument." Wilson and his team used different types of particles, from simple salts to complex mixtures of molecules, to see if they could predict the size of the resulting droplets. "We were absolutely thrilled to be able to, from a physical chemistry perspective and a surface chemistry perspective, provide some insight into a process that is quite important for understanding cloud droplet formation and climate change in particular."
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