HARL Weekly News – April 20, 2018

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Dr. Robert Swap and Dr. Nader Abuhassan from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center installed a Pandora spectrometer on the roof platform at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction (NCWCP). Pandora tracks either the Sun or Moon to collect light through the total atmospheric column at wavelengths between 291nm and 523nm to measure the column abundances of formaldehyde, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. The Pandora instrument will remain at NCWCP for comparisons with ARL’s in situ measurements of NO2, O3, and SO2 under the direction of Mr. Owen Parker of the City College of New York, a visiting intern under the NOAA CREST Scholarship program, and Drs. Xinrong Ren and Winston Luke.

Daniel Tong gave an invited talk to the strategic foresight community at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters on April 19, 2018. In his talk, titled “Increasing dust storm activity in the United States: Environmental and health effects,” Daniel presented the trend of windblown dust storms in the western U.S., and discussed the impacts of increasing dust activity on aviation and highway safety, human health, agricultural and solar energy productivity.

Drs. Chris Loughner and Pius Lee were invited to give talks in the 2nd Earth Day Research Symposium at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The Atmospheric Program at UMBC is satellite focused and the symposium aims to heighten interest among UMBC graduate students to pursue cutting edge research in geo-scientific disciplines. Chris and Pius brought a unique atmospheric composition, air quality, and health impact to the symposium. ARL is always a prominent team player with colleagues in academia, and their talks received positive attention from both the students and faculty. The mission of gelling with cutting edge scientists and potential student interns was well accomplished. Their respective talks were: Challenge of air quality forecasting for Baltimore and coastal places downwind of large emissions (Pius) and Impact of historical air pollution emission reductions on human health during extreme heat (Chris).