A Use for Staring at Clouds

     While many people can claim they're experts of watching clouds, not many can say they study clouds like Pierre Herckes. Pierre Herckes is currently leading a team of scientists to collect samples of clouds and fog to observe the chemical reactions and transformations occurring on the atomic level. To gather these samples, Herckes' team hikes up mountains and uses a fan to gather precipitation in the form of beads to analyze the particles after being collected. Herckes notes a large component of this is waiting for a cloud or fog. Herckes' team studies clouds and fog to determine how transformations in the air affect the quality of the air, the health of organisms, and the environment. While these transformations can neutralize harmful substances, they can also form harmful substances from harmless substances. These reactions also form either a cooling or a warming and reflecting effect in the atmosphere. Herckes also studies the formation of Nitrosamines which could potentially pose a threat to human health. In the end, Herckes and his team now studying these gas particles and how they interact within clouds will shine some light on this unclear phenomenon. Find more information in the article: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2012/09/19/chemistry-and-clouds
       As many people often learn of the basics of particles and the states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas), this article takes this topic to a whole new level. Based on how these particles interact in the atmosphere, they can either produce beneficial or detrimental effects in our environment. I particularly believe this research is important today as we as a species have contributed such an overwhelming amount of air pollution to the atmosphere to a degree where it's important that we do know how these particles are behaving in atmosphere. For while this could help erase the error of humans by turning pollutants into harmful substances, it could conversely creating a warming, reflective product which would intensify the greenhouse effect and global warming. This could even affect human's health with end results spanning to cancer. Thus this research led by Herckes could certainly help human's understanding and treatment of the atmosphere.