The VandenBoer Group is a collaborator in the multinational Fatima field campaign to study marine fog formation towards improving forecasting capabilities. Group members Leyla Salehpoor and Leigh Crilley are measuring aerosol, atmospheric trace gas, and fog water chemical composition. This molecular scale work helps to describe the first interactions between water vapour and a seed aerosol that leads to atmospheric droplet formation in events like fog. A week of integrating instruments on a working vessel that was converted to a marine science ship is currently being followed by a month-long observational campaign, supported by a large forecasting group spanning government and industry collaborators, as well as a second large science team based on Sable Island. The study is probing atmospheric and oceanic linkages that span molecular through synoptic to global scale phenomena and has been featured in several recent news articles:
CBC – Scientists descend on Sable Island for massive study of fog
CTV – Study on ‘Mystery of Fog’
CBC – Scientists head to one of the foggiest places on Earth to study mysterious phenomenon