Classifying Atmospheric Aerosols using Raman Spectroscopy

Atmospheric aerosols are minute solid particles or liquid droplets suspended in the air that can originate from both natural and anthropogenic sources. They are generally measured on scales from nanometers to microns and are important to study because they can have drastic impacts on the Earth System as well as the organisms that inhabit it. Raman Spectroscopy can obtain compositional information about super and submicron aerosols. The Raman spectra can be used to determine aerosol composition in the atmosphere. We implemented a python script that is designed to classify particles based on their Raman spectra. Manual methods for classification are readily available and can effectively classify particles in the atmosphere. However, automatic implementation of script to loop through files containing Raman spectra data are much more efficient in producing results. The ability to efficiently classify aerosols will give us an enhanced understanding for what’s in the atmosphere at a given time and can be used to more easily study the relationship between meteorological conditions and aerosol composition.