ARL Weekly News – November 2, 2018

HQ
Winston Luke will travel to Albany, New York from November 4-10 to attend the technical and science committee meetings of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP). NADP is a cooperative program of federal, state, tribal and local agencies, educational institutions, private companies and non-governmental organizations, and provides long-term, high-quality air and precipitation measurements to evaluate atmospheric deposition over space and time. NADP’s 500+ independent sites and five monitoring networks measure acids, nutrients, base cations, and mercury in precipitation; atmospheric concentrations of gaseous ammonia; and gaseous, elemental and particulate mercury. NADP data supports research on multi-pollutant source/receptor relationships, atmospheric modeling, the potential for deposition effects on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and biogeochemical cycling of pollutants. ARL supports the Atmospheric Integrated Research Monitoring Network (AIRMoN), as well as sites in the Mercury Deposition Network (MDN), Mercury Litterfall Network, National Trends Network (NTN), and Atmospheric Mercury Network (AMNet).

Hyun Cheol Kim will visit Prof. Rokjin Park at Seoul National University, South Korea, to discuss future collaboration on satellite-based top-down emission estimations (Nov. 6-7). He will also attend the 1st Workshop for the Development of Korean Air Quality Forecasting System (Nov. 8-10, Busan, Korea), and will present “Top-down NOx Emissions Estimation: Applications of Conservative Downscaling and Deep Neural Networks.”

FRD
On 31 October, Cherraceitta Taylor from OAR visited FRD to provide classroom supervisory safety training. Three employees from the National Weather Service in Pocatello attended the training in addition to several staff at FRD. The training included a safety walk-through of FRD’s offices and tracer laboratory.

Rick Eckman worked with Lisa Scaffardi at ARL Headquarters to draft a laboratory highlight on FRD’s collaboration with local biologists to investigate meteorological factors influencing the spread of white nose syndrome in bats. The syndrome appears to be associated with unusual bat activity during their hibernation period, and some studies have suggested a correlation of the cold-season activity with the weather. The highlight is at https://www.arl.noaa.gov/about/news-photos/frds-meteorological-observations-to-assist-biologists-studying-white-nose-syndrome-in-bats/.

ATDD
LaToya Myles is co-author of a paper entitled “What Goes Up Must Come Down: Integrating Air and Water Quality Monitoring” recently published in Environmental Science and Technology. The paper, which was led by Helen Amos from EPA, discusses gaps in air and water quality monitoring of nitrogen and phosphorus and proposes options to better integrate monitoring, including collocating deposition and water quality sites and filling coverage gaps in urban corridors, agricultural areas, undeveloped watersheds, and coastal zones. The paper may be accessed using this link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b03504

LaToya Myles attended the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Honors and Recognition Committee meeting on October 25-26 in Washington, DC. The purpose of the meeting was to review updates to union and section awards and plan workshops for Fall Meeting. The committee maintains oversight of AGU’s honors and recognition programs at all levels – medals, fellows, awards, and prizes – and provides recommendations on improving nomination and selection policies and procedures.