A group of researchers from The University of New Mexico Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, led by Distinguished Professor Hua Guo, have teamed up with colleagues from Texas A&M University to understand more about the photochemistry of Earth’s ozone.
A group of researchers from The University of New Mexico Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, led by Distinguished Professor Hua Guo, have teamed up with colleagues from Texas A&M University to understand more about the photochemistry of Earth’s ozone.
A paper authored by the group and recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers a long-awaited explanation for the “odd” behavior of ozone molecules in our atmosphere. The discovery was made using quantum mechanical calculations performed with Center for Advanced Research Computing resources.
Ozone (O3) is a gas known for its ability to absorb the sun’s potentially harmful ultraviolet rays in the stratosphere. It performs this function both by splitting up (into a single oxygen atom and an O2 oxygen molecule) and by subsequent recombining. This process also affects air pollution in the lower atmosphere. “The O atom is largely formed in its excited electronic state and it can have a large impact on the formation of the hydroxyl radical (OH), which serves as the detergent in cleaning various pollutions in Earth’s atmosphere,” explained Guo.
Continue reading at University of New Mexico.
Image via University of New Mexico.
