Seminar by J. Zheng, postdoc at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Seminar by Jianyu Zheng, postdoctoral researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Goddard Earth Science Technology and Research (GESTAR) II
On June 18 and 19, 2025, Jianyu Zheng, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Center, visited LISA. A LISA collaborator since his thesis, he took advantage of his stay to talk with LISA researchers and students and visit the CESAM simulation platform. Jianyu Zheng gave a seminar on June 18, 2025 entitled “The retrieval of dust optical depth and effective diameter based on CALIOP and MODIS observations from visible to thermal infrared”.
Welcome back PEGASUS !
After a long journey to Namibia, the PEGASUS mobile platform has finally returned to Créteil.
PEGASUS was at the heart of the two observation campaigns carried out on the coast and in the Namib desert in May and September 2024 as part of the AEROFOG project. Thanks to the mobilization of LISA researchers and engineers, PEGASUS recorded valuable and unique data on the physico-chemical and optical properties of the region's characteristic natural and anthropogenic aerosols, enabling us to understand the formation, lifespan and chemical composition of fog, the essential element for the survival of ecosystems in Namibia's hyperarid environments.
More info : AEROFOG project, coordinated by LISA and contributed by laboratories LCE, KIT and TROPOS, is funded by ANR-DFG. (https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-22-CE92-0051)
The GECKO-A model in open source
Developed over many years at LISA and NCAR, the GECKO-A model (Generator for Explicit Chemistry and Kinetics in the Atmosphere) enables (i) the auto-generation of explicit chemical schemes for the oxidation of a precursor compound in the gas and condensed phases (i.e. provide the list of elementary reactions and associated kinetic constants) and (ii) describe the phase transfer of each organic species (i.e. provide the mass transfer and associated properties: saturation vapor pressure, Henry's law constants, etc.).
The GECKO-A model code is now available as open source. You can now download/clone it via a gitlab IPSL repository. The 0D box model for solving GECKO-A chemical mechanisms in time is also available as open source on the IPSL gitlab repository.
The gitlab repositories are also accompanied by detailed wikis to help you get to grips with the model.
More info :
- https://geckoa.lisa.u-pec.fr/
- https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/ipsl/lisa/geckoa/public/
LISA welcomes B. Finlayson-Pitts' group
On June 10, 2025, researchers from the group led by Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, Professor of Chemistry at UCI (University of California Irvine) and a pioneer in the study of atmospheric chemistry, visited the MEREIA group.
Barbara Finlayson-Pitts' group is world-renowned for its studies of atmospheric processes such as new particle formation, heterogeneous chemistry and surface chemistry. During the visit, UCI researchers chatted with researchers and students from the MEREIA group, and shared a convivial moment over lunch, followed by scientific presentations given by both groups and a tour of the CESAM experimental simulation platform. The event was well attended, and the discussions and exchanges were very interesting.
On June 12, 2025 Barbara Finlayson-Pitts received the prestigious L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards in Paris (https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/five-exceptional-researchers-win-2025-loreal-unesco-women-science-international-awards). Our most sincere congratulations to Prof. Finlayson-Pitts for this award, which testifies to an exceptional career!
All about single particle mass spectrometry
From April 24 to 25, 2025, Xiaoli Shen, a researcher at Purdue University in the USA, and an expert in mass spectrometry, visited LISA's MEREIA team.
She presented a seminar entitled “Airborne Measurements of Biomass Burning Particles by Using the PALMS-NG Instrument” to a packed audience of students and researchers. Many questions followed the inspiring presentation for our future projects. Many thanks to her!
