AOSC Seminar by Dr. Edward Strobach, 9/26/2024
AOSC Seminar
Edward Strobach
AOSC
Title
Exploring Complex Relationships Between Meteorology and Air Quality in Urban Environments
Abstract
Recent decades have seen an increase in the quantity and density of urban air quality and meteorology measurements to address key questions related to the role that the urban boundary layer plays in pollution transport and dispersion. Much of the work conducted at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory focuses on addressing urban air quality, which is often done in coordination with other research institutions, thus leading to a convergence of instrumentation and a wealth of data at a high spatiotemporal resolution. In this presentation, we explore two recent examples featuring instruments deployed to survey the evolving air quality conditions in an urban environment: 1) a non-local transport event from the Canadian wildfires during June 2023 into the Baltimore-Washington region, and 2) some highlights from a recent study exploring the impact of complex mesoscale flows on ozone, NOx, and VOCs within the Los Angeles basin during the 2021 Southwest Urban NOx and VOCs Experiment (SUNVEx). The smoke transported into the Mid-Atlantic region in the former example led to health hazardous conditions that made national headlines. A Doppler lidar, a regional network of air quality stations, backscatter measurements from ceilometers, and the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model are used to interrogate the transport event and diagnose the meteorological conditions that led to high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and low visibility. The latter example focuses on relationships between dynamics and chemistry measurements in Pasadena, California during a Seabreeze event that also featured northerly flows from the San Gabriel Mountains that occurred simultaneously at the measurement site.
Bio
Edward Strobach earned his PhD at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2017, with a focus on interrogating complex boundary layer flows along the coast of Maryland for a wind energy survey conducted in 2013. Since then, he has worked in both operational and research environments with experience in numerical weather prediction modeling and observations. Edward’s operational modeling experience at the NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) includes regional and global modeling applications focused on tropical cyclone intensification, boundary layer and cloud microphysics development, and air quality verification. Following EMC, Edward worked at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) in the Atmospheric Remote Sensing (ARS) group where he presided as the lead meteorologist for the California Fire and Dynamics Experiment (CalFiDE) and the Coastal Urban Plume Dynamics Study (CUPiDS), and worked on research problems related to fire behavior and urban air quality. Edward recently joined the University of Maryland, College Park as a Postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Russ Dickerson to interrogate methane emissions emanating from landfills, and the interactions that landfill plumes have with changing meteorological conditions.
Contact
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AOSC Seminar
Pre-seminar refreshment: N/A
Seminar: 3:30-4:30pm, Room: ATL 2400(only when in-person)
Meet-the-Speaker: 4:30-5:00pm, Room: ATL 3400(only when in-person) [For AOSC Students only]
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