Atmospheric Sciences

Urban & Regional Air Quality

Research in this area is concerned with regional air quality issues such as:

• Controlling nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds, to manage tropospheric ozone pollution.
• Hazardous air pollutants: using science to base standards on rigorously studied risks.
• Air quality and climate: how does climate influence air quality at a regional or local level?

Current modeling practices often do not capture variations in pollutants such as ozone—they represent a limited sample of the diverse meteorology and human behavior that affect air pollution.

Improved modeling of regional air quality will help understand variability, reveal patterns of behavior, and pollutant transport issues. Controlled experiments in lab and field can help validate improved models.

The goal is for improved regional models to contribute to development of an integrated plan to provide most effective emission reduction strategies.

Transportation

Utilizing individual vehicle emissions test results and measurements, we analyze how the combination of vehicle technology, land-use patterns and driving behavior affect the urban air pollutant emissions in the transportation sector.