ARL Weekly News – July 28, 2023
| Recent Events |
ARL Field Deployment in NY/CT during AEROMMA
In collaboration with University of Maryland, University Research Foundation, Yale University, and Princeton University, ARL scientists are participating in the field deployment in New York and Connecticut during the Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Area (AEROMMA) field campaign. Instruments that measure air pollutants (including ozone, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, black carbon, ammonia, and aerosols) and greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) are deployed on a research aircraft and a mobile lab as well as at a ground-based field station. Data from the research aircraft and mobile lab will be used to characterize the meteorology and chemistry leading to air pollution events and emissions of greenhouse gases in the New York City (NYC) and Long Island Sound area. The ammonia measurements at the Yale Coastal Field Station in Guilford, CT and in NYC will help to better understand the spatial and temporal variations of ammonia in urban and suburban areas, and to calculate the on-road ammonia emission factor. Results from this study will provide the scientific basis for effective air quality and climate policies.
ATDD Hosts Kids Day
ATDD hosted its second Kids Day on Wednesday, July 26, where staff brought their children and grandchildren to work. The day was filled with fun events to showcase the lab’s work and get the kids involved in activities. The UAS demonstration and lab tour allowed the kids to get an up-close look at what their family members do at work, and the STEM trivia, science experiments, and weather balloon launch let them get some hands-on experience.
Size-resolved Aerosol Flux Measurements at Chestnut Ridge
During the week of July 17-21, a team of scientists from Colorado State University (CSU) visited ARL’s Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division (ATDD) in Oak Ridge, TN, to begin a collaboration on measurements of size-resolved aerosol fluxes. The team was led by Prof. Delphine Farmer and included Dr. Joshi Rutambhara, a post-doctoral Research Associate at CSU, and Lily Jones, a graduate student in Chemistry at CSU (https://sites.google.com/site/delphinefarmer/farmer-group).
With the help of engineers Mark Heuer and Dominick Christensen at ATDD, the CSU scientists installed a Portable Optical Particle Scanner (POPS) near the top of the 60 meter tower at ARL’s Chestnut Ridge AmeriFlux site near Oak Ridge. The POPS instrument can accurately measure aerosol particles over a size range of 120 nanometers to 3 micrometers and coupled with a sonic anemometer can determine aerosol particle fluxes using the eddy covariance method. The installation is part of a multi-site network called the Fluxes of Aerosol Continuous Observing Network (FALCON) being developed by Dr. Farmer and her team, with the goal of obtaining aerosol flux measurements over a variety of land use types.
The FALCON project is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in an effort to reduce the uncertainties associated with predicting aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere, thereby improving climate, weather and air quality predictive models. The aerosol flux measurements are slated to remain at the Chestnut Ridge site for at least two years and possibly longer. Scientists at ATDD, including Dr. Rick Saylor and Dr. John Kochendorfer, will collaborate with Dr. Farmer and her team to interpret the flux measurements and potentially develop new aerosol particle deposition parameterizations that can be incorporated into NOAA’s forecast models. For more information, contact Rick Saylor (rick.saylor@noaa.gov).
UFS workshop
Barry Baker presented at the Unifying Innovations in Forecasting Capabilities Workshop held in Boulder July 24-28, 2023, on the Development of the Configurable Atmospheric Chemistry (CATChem) model and its application within the Unified Forecast System forming a unified UFS-Chem Application
| Publications Accepted |
Discerning the concentration and bi-directional flux of ammonia in an urban estuary using the relaxed eddy accumulation method by Emily Joyce, Sawyer Balint, Wendell Walters, Nebila Lichiheb, Mark Heuer, LaToya Myles, Brian Heikes, Meredith Hastings has been accepted in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences