SciVIBE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

From wildfires and hurricanes to drought and rainstorms, atmospheric scientist Ruby Leung explores the climatic underpinnings of extreme weather in this episode. Learn how wildfires in the U.S. are changing, what we can expect in tomorrow’s hurricanes, and what Ruby does when she isn’t modeling human-Earth system interactions.

Host Nick Hennen sits down with Pacific Northwest National Lab’s Ryan McClure. Ryan is involved in a NASA-funded project with PNNL to blast soil laden with bacteria to the International Space Station.
The bacteria-infused soil is from Prosser, Wash. Researchers like McClure and Janet Jansson, a laboratory fellow at PNNL and the leader of the study, will look at what the bacteria do in a microgravity environment to learn more about how soil microbial communities function in space. That’s the intelligence scientists need to grow food in space or on another celestial body.
If you’d like to follow the mission’s progress and launch, you can do so here: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/spacex.html or https://www.nasa.gov/spacex.
 

When wildfire season creates toxic air in your community, the creeping smoke can make its way into your home, creating hazards that aren’t always easy to detect. This penetration of smoke can lead to high concentrations of tiny particles indoors when nearby wildfires are extreme. Exposure to this kind of air has been linked to unfortunate health results.
 
A PNNL research team, made up of Chrissi Antonopoulos, a Senior Analyst focusing on the advancement of energy- and carbon-neutral buildings, and Sam Rosenberg, a Data Research Scientist focusing on residential energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and building codes, studied this phenomenon. Together, they huddled inside and examined the air quality inside a nearly 100-year-old 2,600 square foot single-family dwelling in Portland, Oregon as wildfires raged nearby, creating toxic smoke throughout the city. Using low-cost sensors deployed in a new DOE Building America field study, they discovered some clear benefits in air quality from using portable air cleaners during this high smoke event. 
 
Tune in as host Nick Hennen learns more from special guest, Chrissi Antonopoulos on this episode of SciVIBE.

We meet with PNNL physicist Emily Mace on this episode of SciVIBE to get to know her a bit, learn about her experience working in the Shallow Underground Lab and with highly sensitive radiation detectors—designed and built by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists—to measure argon-39 activity in groundwater samples.

Arun Devaraj, a materials scientist, remains committed to improving the quality and performance of metals. He is in the midst of an ambitious project to explore how hydrogen, combined with stress and oxidation, leads to catastrophic failures of high-strength steels that are widely used in the nuclear and automotive industries. His research will have important implications for carbon-free energy sources and their storage. And his research will unfold at PNNL’s Energy Sciences Center, a recently dedicated $90 million facility on the Richland, Washington, campus.

PNNL Earth scientist Brian O’Neill answers listener-submitted questions on climate change on this special, climate-focused episode, which coincides with the release of the latest from the IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Tune in to hear your questions answered!