The Nordic Society for Aerosol Research (NOSA)
The Nordic Society for Aerosol Research (NOSA) was founded in 1978. Its purpose is to promote aerosol research, interdisciplinary collaboration between members, to facilitate information to members and the general public by the arrangement of symposia, to support international collaboration and exchange of ideas, and to promote re-growth and education within aerosol sciences.
Aerosol science plays a key role in several areas.
Industry
Nano-technology is an area where aerosols are of profound importance, usually because aerosolisaition of various materials are important in the manufacturing of nano-components. Aerosol science is also important in many parts of the industry where clean room conditions are critical, e.g. manufacturing of electronics, optics and medications.
Health
Aerosols often contain toxic compounds that may transfer into the body, even into the blood, through the respiration system. In high enough concentrations, the aerosols can cause adversehas health effects even if its material is not toxic itself.
Medicine
Aerosols are used to distribute medicines into the nose or the lungs with the help of inhalators.
Environment
Due to theirits health effects aerosols are an environmental problem. Aerosols also play key roles in several more complex ways such as acidification and destruction of stratospheric ozone.
Climate
The aerosol itself Aerosols can either scatter incoming solar light back into the space, or absorb it (soot), thus cooling or warning the climate which cause a cooling and warming effect respectively. In addition, aerosols change the reflectivity (albedo) and life time of clouds, which also has a net cooling effect. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rank aerosols and clouds as the most uncertain man-made climate forcing. The reliability of climate forecasts hence largely depend on how these processes are represented in the climate models.
NOSA serves as a vital forum for the Nordic Aerosol scientist to meet, interact and plan research activities together. This has lead to several projects and research collaborations. A large number of Nordic research networks has been established from the NOSA activities since NOSA was founded. NOSA’s networking activities have been crucial in improving the quality of research and education within the Nordic community, bringing scientist together at least once a year in the respective NOSA symposia. The latter organised annually since 1978, are part of NOSA activities and fulfil several of NOSA’s objectives. They bring together members of all aerosol research fields from most departments, institutes and research groups, not only form the Nordic countries but from all over the world. Last but not the least, NOSA symposia serves as small scale conferences form young Phd students and Early Career Scientists to get some first experience of international conferences with oral and poster presentation in a relaxed environment. To encourage students to improve their presentation skills, a best student presentation award is given on the final day of each symposium, along with the NOSA aerosolgist award announced by the NOSA president at the conference dinner.
Statutes of NOSA can be found in the document below.