Atmospheric Chemistry & Air Quality

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

Year after year, ozone exceedances in Houston are most common in spring and late summer, while urban areas elsewhere in the United States have their highest ozone in mid-summer.

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

View from the Moody Tower sampling site, Houston, TX.

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, Houston, TX.

Urban Boundary Layer turbulence, and energy and trace gas fluxes 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.

Lick Creek Field Site

The Lick Creek Park Air Quality tower was erected with funds from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to serve as a rural measurement site during the second Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS).