Oaktree Project

Gunnar Schade is taking trace gas exchange measurements from trees along an urban to rural gradient which may serve as a proxy of future assimilation and biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission potentials in a changed climate, and therefore can be used to study the nature of changes resulting from climate change.

Upper Troposphere/Lower Stratosphere Chemistry and Dynamics

Kenneth Bowman is working with scientists from NCAR and other institutions to investigate the chemistry and dynamics of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere using the new NCAR HIAPER research aircraft, satellite data and model simulations. Also see Climate Dynamics and Atmospheric Transport and Mixing.

Air Pollution Meteorology

John Nielsen-Gammon's research group investigates the role of the weather in controlling day-to-day levels of photochemical air pollution. Current active research issues include the seasonally-varying controls on local and background ozone levels, the effect of the sea breeze on air quality and techniques for improving numerical models that drive photochemical simulations.

Agricultural Air Quality

Members of Sarah Brooks's and Gunnar Schade's groups are characterizing the physical, chemical and hygroscopic properties of pollution aerosols in urban, rural and agricultural sites. A sampling campaign in the summer of 2006 was conducted at a feedlot in the Texas Panhandle.

Urban Air Quality

Sarah Brooks's group is participating in the TEXAQS 2 field campaign in Houston, TX. We employ a suite of aerosol instruments to characterize size distributions ranging over 2 orders of magnitude in diameter (0.2 to 20 microns). We also collect time resolved filter samples for hygroscopicity and chemical measurements.

Urban Boundary Layer Studies

The Houston urban flux tower is a privately owned communications tower. Dr. Schade was partially funded by the Texas Air Research Center (TARC) to install micrometeorological equipment onto the tower, with the goal to characterize urban surface parameters that are important for meteorological and air quality modeling such as roughness length. Another goal is to measure urban energy and trace gas fluxes in order to validate emissions' inventories and make suggestions for urban heat island and air quality improvements. Installations were completed in May 2007, and measurements are ongoing since late June 2007.

Experimental and Theoretical Atmospheric Chemistry

Dr. Renyi Zhang

• Experimental and numerical investigation of hydrocarbon oxidation
• Nucleation, growth and transformation of aerosols
• Instrument development
• Chemical transport modeling