There and Back Again: Linking Regional and Global Air Quality and Climate

Speaker: Dr. Kevin Bowman Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA Recent advances in observational capabilities, global chemistry transport models, and data assimilation techniques have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of global and regional air quality. This progress has been enabled in part by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES), a high-resolution Fourier Transform spectrometer aboard the NASA Aura spacecraft that provides the global distribution of vertical ozone and carbon monoxide profiles. These observations can characterize how pollutants such as ozone can be transformed and transported on global scales with important implications for both regional air quality and climate. In particular, I will discuss research in understanding the contribution of surface emissions to tropical tropospheric ozone and the impact of summertime ozone over North America on chemistry climate coupling. In addition, we will explore a new effort to develop "sensor webs" that can combine ground, aircraft, and satellite observations with adjoint modeling techniques to design optimal sampling strategies that maximize the information available in these observations. I will show how sensor webs could be used in intensive air quality campaigns and their potential role for global environmental monitoring.

Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 209

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes