[Grad-postdoc-assn] Thompson Lecture Series with Dr. Ian Faloona, Dec 7-9th -- Schedule, sign up for individual meetings and potluck!

[Leiqiu Hu]

Dear NCAR Postdocs,

The Thompson Lecture Series (TLS) is coming up on December 7-9th (Monday-Wednesday), featuring Dr. Ian Faloona, our previous ASP postdoc and current associate professor at University of California-Davis who studies the physical and chemical principles that control trace gas concentrations and their fluctuations in the atmosphere and ocean. Dr. Faloona's bio and abstracts for his lectures can be found in ASP TLS website <http://www.asp.ucar.edu/thompson/thompson_lecture.php> as well as the end of this email.


 

 -       Twice a year, the TLS brings a scientist to NCAR to talk about their work, make themselves available to talk to postdocs about science and careers, and provide an opportunity for networking among the postdocs. 


-       A more detailed schedule (including opportunities to sign up for individual meetings) is available on the wiki <https://wiki.ucar.edu/pages/viewpage.action?title=Schedule+of+events+Ian+Faloona&spaceKey=aspthompson08>. If you have trouble accessing the wiki, please send me an email and we'll work it out. 

-       We are encouraging postdocs to sign up the individual meeting with Dr. Faloona (sign up here <https://wiki.ucar.edu/pages/viewpage.action?title=Schedule+of+events+Ian+Faloona&spaceKey=aspthompson08>). Don't be afraid to sign up just because your science interests are different than the speaker's! You will hopefully find that he has a breadth of interests and can also offer you interesting insights on your career development. 

-       ASPs, recall that attending TLS events is mandatory if you're in town! 

 

The main events are listed below:

  Monday, Dec. 7 (Mesa Lab)

-       Breakfast and science+career discussion - 9:00 - 10:30 am, ML -Tower B Penthouse

-       General seminar - 11:00 am - 12:00 pm, ML Main Seminar room

-       Lunch with postdocs - 12:00-1:30 pm, ML Cafeteria

-       Potluck dinner (families welcome!) - 5:30 pm, ML Damon room (sign up here <https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/aspthompson08/Potluck+dinner+with+Ian+Faloona+signup>).



Tuesday, Dec. 8 (Foothills Lab)

-       Science seminar - 11-12, FL 1022 Main Seminar room

-       Lunch with postdocs - 12:00-2 pm, FL Cafeteria

-       Informal dinner out - 5:30 pm (sign up here <https://wiki.ucar.edu/pages/viewpage.action?title=Schedule+of+events+Ian+Faloona&spaceKey=aspthompson08>)



Wednesday, Dec. 9 (Foothills Lab)

-       Breakfast and science+career discussion - 9-10:30 am, FL 1002 conference room










 

We will send out more reminders as we get closer, but please go ahead and fill up those slots and mark the events on your calendar!  And please don't hesitate to send an email if you have any questions.

 

Best regards,

 

Current Thompson Lecture Committee

Angie Pendergrass, Andy Prein, Colin Zarzycki, Farshid Nazari, Leiqiu Hu, Lisa Kaser

 

Dr. Faloona's Bio

Dr. Faloona's research group is attempting to bridge the fields of geophysical turbulence and chemistry through observations on airplanes, sea vessels, and towers. Emphasis is placed on an interdisciplinary understanding of the physical and chemical principles that control trace gas concentrations and their fluctuations in the atmosphere and ocean. The turbulent planetary boundary layers that lie adjacent to the interfaces of the earth, ocean, and sky play host to a great variety of exchange processes that are critical to our understanding of the climate system. We are dedicated to the idea that the ability of the scientific community to advance our understanding at a rate that outpaces the environmental challenges we continue to encounter is strongly contingent upon active training in a multitude of scientific disciplines. We are therefore actively pursuing topics in atmospheric and oceanic photochemistry, boundary layer meteorology, and carbon cycling.

 

General seminar (Dec. 7th Monday 11:00 am - 12:00 pm @ ML Main seminar room):

Second Hand Smog:  A Bird's Eye View of Intercontinental Air Pollution Transport from California's Coastal Mountains

In October, 2015 the US EPA revised the national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for 8-hour ground level ozone concentrations from 75 to 70 ppbv. While some argue that this limit is not low enough to adequately protect human health and air quality, some air districts, especially those in the mountainous western states, are concerned about the encroaching limits of their ability to meet new standards due to the perennial impacts of background ozone from distant sources well outside of US jurisdiction.  I will present the results of three years of monitoring from a unique mountaintop site on Chews Ridge in the Santa Lucia Mountain Range east of Big Sur, California. The site is demonstrated to be ideal for monitoring the atmospheric inflow to North America from afar because it is located only 20 km downwind of the sparsely populated Central California coastline yet is perched at an altitude of 1.5 km — well above the strong influence of the ocean that routinely complicates most coastal monitoring efforts. From careful consideration of the daytime ozone budget inland, airborne measurements of mixing between the free troposphere and boundary layer, and an array of size-segregated aerosol composition data, I will outline a method of quantifying Asian contributions to ground level ozone in California's Central Valley. Such a forensic technique, based solely on observational data, represents a novel method of measuring the direct impacts of second hand smog from distant sources. This type of empirical source apportionment can potentially lead to a more nuanced understanding of the extent to which air quality standards are within our federal regulatory control, and to a greater appreciation of the global nature of air pollution challenges.    

 

 

Science seminar (Dec. 8th Tuesday 11:00 am - 12:00 pm @FL 1022 Large Auditorium):

The Importance of Seeing Turbulence in Airborne Atmospheric Chemistry Studies: 
From Entrainment Mixing to Emissions Estimates

 Atmospheric turbulence and atmospheric chemistry seem to have originated from different branches of more fundamental scientific inquiry, and despite their reticulate interplay in the atmospheric boundary layer (the main source region for most trace gases and aerosols) expertise in these fields remains largely segregated. I will describe strategies for deploying instrumented aircraft, based on the principles of turbulence theory, that can illumine both dynamical and chemical mechanisms that are of paramount importance to an accurate understanding of the atmosphere. Examples will be adduced from several airborne campaigns that highlight not only the common eddy covariance measurements of surface fluxes, but also entrainment rates, photochemical production rates, aerosol uptake rates, and oxidation yields. Judicious, systematic flight patterns will be shown to permit accurate quantification of the individual budget terms of many trace gases (e.g., ozone, methane, SO2, and NOx), which has the power to reveal vertical and horizontal mixing and photochemistry separately thereby isolating distinct model process weaknesses and guiding improvements in the fidelity of chemical transport models. Finally, I will show how even traditional "mass balance" flight approaches applied to non-reactive compounds can overlook an important aspect of turbulent transport and will suggest an improved method for quantifying localized sources by aircraft based on the application of Gauss' Theorem. 





Leiqiu Hu
Postdoctoral Fellow/Advanced Study Program
Research Applications Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, CO, USA
Office phone: 303-497-2740

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucar.edu/pipermail/grad-postdoc-assn/attachments/20151123/aa464a77/attachment-0001.html