ARL Weekly News – April 3, 2020

Recent Events

Air Quality Monitoring: Scientists at ARL, in collaboration with partners at the University of Maryland and the Maryland Department of the Environment, deployed instruments at two field sites in the Washington-Baltimore region to monitor air quality and greenhouse gases during the COVID-19 outbreak. The deployed instruments include a Picarro carbon dioxide/methane analyzer, an ozone analyzer, and a sulfur diode analyzer. The two field sites include a near-road site on Interstate Highway 95 (I-95) in Laurel, MD and a rooftop site on the UMD campus in College Park, MD (see the figure below). The installation, operation and maintenance of instruments were designed to have minimal impact on the health of NOAA personnel. The operation of the instruments was made automatic with limited site visits for maintenance. The status of the instruments is being monitored remotely and the monitoring data can be transferred via the internet.

Three images. (Left) On a counter are what look like four large metal boxes stacked 2-by-2, an open laptop, and larger monitor on top of another metal box. One longer metal box sits under the counter with its edges on the seat of a chair and a metal stand. (Middle) Inside a chain link fence is a metal trailer topped with a two-tiered metal railing. Various rectangular and cylindrical shaped devices are attached to metal poles on the railing and a scaffold. (Right) A map depicts part of the Washington-Baltimore metro area. Washington is just to the left of center near the bottom and Baltimore is near the top right. Between them, the UMD campus and I-95 sites are marked by red stars and red text.

STEM Support: Temple Lee is serving on the thesis committee for Brittany Porcelli, a candidate for a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. The title of Ms. Porcelli’s thesis is “Flight Test Optimization of Fixed-Wing and Rotary-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Planetary Boundary Layer Research.”

Publications

An article on which Temple Lee was listed as a coauthor that was published earlier this year in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences was selected for an Editors’ Highlight in Eos. It can be accessed here: https://eos.org/editor-highlights/trees-are-watching-us-and-our-actions.