MORE FOREST RESEARCH!
Markku Kulmala, one of the world’s leading researchers in atmospheric aerosol science, describes Finnish forest research as world-class, but says more information is still needed.
ELINA VENESMÄKI JA SANNA LAAKKONEN, photos VESA TYNI
Academician Markku Kulmala , the first chair of the Finn- ish Climate Change Panel, has studied the atmosphere and climate change for decades. “My interest in the field arose from pure curiosity and the desire to better understand what was happening around us,” he says. A professor of Aerosol and Environmental Physics, Kulmala’s main job is at the Institute of Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) of the University of Helsinki. It studies the composition of the atmosphere, atmosphere – Earth surface feedbacks and climate change. He has been at its helm since the early 1990s, steering its national operations as well as its international networks. That the work would bring him worldwide recognition was not something Kulmala envisioned. “It never entered my mind that my team and I could become famous. But then our work began to be cited and recognised around the world.” The world’s most cited researcher in the geosciences from 2011 to 2018, Kulmala is an honorary doctor or pro- fessor of the universities of Stockholm, Tartu, Budapest, Nanjing, Fudan and Beijing University of Chemical Tech- nology, as well as a member of the Russian and Chinese academies of science. “I would not be an academician and my work would not be so widely referenced without the SMEAR stations,” says Kulmala. LESSONS LEARNED FROM CHERNOBYL Kulmala’s path to Stations Measuring Earth Surfaces and Atmosphere Relations (SMEAR) and their ground-breaking research began in 1977 with his studies in theoretical phys- ics at the University of Helsinki. He turned to atmospheric sciences a few years later, and gradually more and more of his research topics came to involve climate change.
He wrote his doctoral thesis in the 1980s, examining the formation of new particulates in the atmosphere. In those days, acid rain and ozone depletion were receiving a great deal of attention, but climate change was still of minor interest. “The topic was not mainstream back then and no one talked about it much,” he says. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986 marked a turning point in his career. “It was a very unfortunate event, but important from a research perspective. We learned a lot about the flow of different substances from one place to another.” Before the disaster, he had been studying the formation of atmospheric articles. After it, he focused on nuclear fallout and suspended particulates. “We measured conifer needles, fish, the soil, cow’s milk, you name it, to understand the behaviour of radioactive substances such as caesium. This gave us a general idea of the transfer of substances – how they circulate from the outside to the inside, from the atmosphere into the soil – and the trees, for example.” Kulmala says this insight served as a fundamental driver for the construction of SMEAR stations. Before that, he spent several months in Austria, seeking in-depth knowledge of aerosol physics, that is, research into air quality and partic- ulate emissions, under the lead of Professor Paul Wagner . “I gained a good grasp of basic research on particulates during that time.” INSIGHT INTO THE EFFECTS OF THE FOREST ECOSYSTEM Kulmala says this insight served as a fundamental driver for the construction of SMEAR stations. They measure interac- tions between the atmosphere and ecosystems on the Earth’s surface, and the results provide diverse and comprehensive long-term data on various ecosystems such as forests.
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