Novakov's aerosol research group, which included Hal Rosen, Ted Chang, Anthony Hansen, Ray Dod and Lara Gundel, developed new analytical techniques for measuring black carbon, the most notable of which is the aethalometer.

The aethalometer, the name of which is derived from a Greek word that means "to blacken with soot", is today the mostly widely used instrument worldwide for measuring atmospheric concentrations of black carbon.

Novakov hosted the first International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere at LBNL in 1978 to provide a forum for scientists to discuss this emerging research field.

[2] In 1984, "The Aethalometer – an instrument for the real-time measurement of optical-absorption by aersosol-particles", co-written with Anthony Hansen and Hal Rosen, was published in Science of the Total Environment.

[4] "Evidence that the spectral dependence of light absorption by aerosols is affected by organic carbon", written by Thomas Kirchstetter, Novakov, and Peter Hobbs, was published in Journal of Geophysical Research in 2004.