ARL Weekly News – November 24, 2017

HQ

Paul Kelly, Xinrong Ren, and Winston Luke are at the Mauna Loa Observatory. The mercury detection equipment at the site will be repaired, calibrated, and improved, and a special calibration study is being conducted. The goal of the study is to improve the accuracy and robustness of measurements of gaseous oxidized mercury. The current measurement methodology for gaseous oxidized mercury suffers from artifacts and biases, which can be especially severe in humid environments, and the current research activity at MLO may improve the overall quality of atmospheric mercury measurements.

Drs. Belay Demoz and Ruben Delgado from the Physics Department of the University of Maryland at Baltimore County (UMBC) visited Drs. Youhua Tang, Daniel Tong, Christopher Loughner, Barry Baker and Pius Lee. The UMBC faculties came with Mr. Yang, one of their PhD students, majoring in research on regional air chemistry and fine resolution simulation of water and land interface processes. Their latest research was instrumental in analyzing data from last July’s Chesapeake Bay Ozone measurement intensive, the first part of a possible multiple event campaign to understand Ozone formation and removal in a Water-Land interface Environmental Transition Study (OWLETS) sponsored by NASA. ARL had been a partner to share expertise on modeling and measurement of air constituents during the high ozone concentration seasons. The next measurement event is slated for summer 2018 in Baltimore. Dr. Winston Luke offered additional measurement expertise and instrumentation possibilities. The UMBC team sought guidance on what meteorological and chemical processes should be focused on and how to go about modeling them. ARL scientists interacted with the UMBC team in advance of the campaign to prepare for the upcoming Baltimore event.