NASA Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (AQAST)
Daniel J. Jacob, Harvard University
AQAST Leader
www.aqast.org
satellites
suborbital platforms
AQAST
models
AQAST
Pollution monitoring
Exposure assessment
AQ forecasting
Source attribution
Quantifying emissions
Natural & foreign
influences
AQ processes
Climate-AQ
interactions
AQAST members
• Daniel Jacob (leader), Loretta Mickley (Harvard)
• Tracey Holloway (deputy leader), Steve Ackerman (U.
Wisconsin); Bart Sponseller (Wisconsin DNR)
• Greg Carmichael (U. Iowa)
• Dan Cohan (Rice U.)
• Russ Dickerson (U. Maryland)
• Bryan Duncan, Yasuko Yoshida, Melanie Follette-Cook
(NASA/GSFC); Jennifer Olson (NASA/LaRC)
• David Edwards (NCAR)
• Arlene Fiore (Columbia Univ.); Meiyun Lin (Princeton)
• Jack Fishman, Ben de Foy (Saint Louis U.)
• Daven Henze, Jana Milford (U. Colorado)
• Edward Hyer, Jeff Reid, Doug Westphal, Kim Richardson (NRL)
• Pius Lee, Tianfeng Chai (NOAA/NESDIS)
• Yang Liu, Matthew Strickland (Emory U.), Bin Yu (UC Berkeley)
• Richard McNider, Arastoo Biazar (U. Alabama – Huntsville)
• Brad Pierce (NOAA/NESDIS)
• Ted Russell, Yongtao Hu, Talat Odman (Georgia Tech); Lorraine
Remer (NASA/GSFC)
• David Streets (Argonne)
• Jim Szykman (EPA/ORD/NERL)
• Anne Thompson, William Ryan, Suellen Haupt (Penn State U.)
On AQAST website (google AQAST),
click on “members” for list of 19
members and areas of expertise
What makes AQAST unique?
All AQAST projects connect Earth Science and air quality management:
 Involve active partnerships with air quality managers, have deliverable
outcomes
Expand relationships through meetings, online tools, newsletters
AQAST has flexibility in how it allocates its resources
 Members adjust work plans to meet evolving air quality needs
 Multi-member “Tiger Teams” are organized each year to address newly
emerging, pressing problems requiring coordinated activity
 AQAST is self-organizing and can respond quickly to demands
Quick, collaborative, flexible,
responsive to the needs of the AQ
community
www.aqast.org
AQ agency
Scope of current AQAST projects
• Local: RAQC, BAAQD
• State: TCEQ, MDE,
Wisconsin DNR, CARB,
Iowa DNR, GAEPD, GFC
• Regional: LADCO, EPA
Region 8
• National: EPA, NOAA,
NPS
Theme
Satellites: MODIS, MISR, MOPITT, AIRS, OMI, TES, GOES, GOME-2
Suborbital: ARCTAS, DISCOVER-AQ, ozonesondes, PANDORA
Models: MOZART, CAM, AM-3, GEOS-Chem, RAQMS, STEM, GISS, CMIP
Earth Science resource
Goals of this meeting
• To share knowledge and experience in using Earth Science data and
tools for serving AQ management
• To educate AQ managers in the use of Earth Science data and tools,
and to educate Earth scientists on AQ needs
• To hear about pressing AQ management issues, and determine how
AQAST can help – to-do list!
AQAST4 at California Air Resources Board – December 2012
AQAST Highlight: CO trends and NOx budgets in Maryland
MOPITT satellite instrument
EPA site (Greenbelt)
• Utility of satellites for longterm trend monitoring;
• Regional character of NOx
pollution;
• NOx effective lifetime in
models is too short.
UMD aircraft
during
DISCOVER-AQ
down
wind
Canty,
Salawitch,
Dickerson,
et al.
upwind
from
Baltimore
CMAQ evaluation with OMI NO2
AQAST Highlight: OMI observes NOx decrease from implementation
of emissions control devices (ECDs) on power plants: 2005-2011
B. Duncan, Y. Yoshida, L. Lamsal, B. de Foy, D. Streets, Z. Lu, N. Krotkov, and K. Pickering
We analyzed the relationship between OMI NO2 columns and emissions
from 55 power plants for 2005-2011. We found that OMI clearly detects
the implementation of ECDs, though this relationship varies due to
changes in the background levels of NO2 (e.g., from the decreasing
mobile source), proximity to urban sources, magnitude of the emissions
reduction, meteorology, etc.
Crystal River facility, Florida
ECDs implemented
June 2009
OMI NO2 shows that
regional levels decreased
2005
Crystal
River
Tampa
2011
x1015 molec/cm2
AQAST Highlight: Wyoming Exceptional Event Demonstration
Wyoming DEQ/AQD used AQAST resources to issue an exceptional event
demonstration package for an ozone exceedance at Thunder Basin, June 6, 2012
R.B. Pierce et al.
AQAST Products
•
GLIMPSE (Henze): fast screening tool for
radiative forcing implications of AQ
management strategies
• Operational AQ ensemble forecasts for
Maryland (Thompson)
• WHIPS (Holloway): user-friendly processing
of satellite data
AQAST progress toward an OMI AQ management toolkit:
AQ managers can now…
1. Easily obtain useful data in familiar formats
Custom OMI NO2 “Level 3” products on any grid in netCDF
with WHIPS (Holloway)
Annual NO2 shapefiles - OMI & CMAQ on CMAQ grids
(AQAST Tiger Team)
Google Earth
2. Find easy-to-use guidance & example scripts for
understanding OMI products and comparing to
simulated troposphere & PBL concentrations
One-stop user portal (Holloway & AQAST Tiger Team)
OMI NO2 & SO2 guidance, field campaign example case
studies (Spak & AQAST Tiger Team)
3. Obtain OMI observational operators for assimilation &
emissions inversion in CMAQ
•NO2 in GEOS-Chem  CMAQ (Henze, Pye)
•SO2 in STEM  CMAQ (Spak, Kim)
•O3 in STEM  CMAQ (Huang, Carmichael, Kim)
AQAST PIs: Carmichael, Spak
OMI NO2 KML in SARP
flight planning
AQAST communications
and outreach
NO2 trends lenticular
• Twice-yearly AQAST meetings
• AQAST workshops and training sessions
• AQAST representation at AQ meetings
• Ozone garden network
• 2012 AGU AQAST session and Town Hall
• Website, quarterly newsletter
• Media center, Twitter
ARSET/AQAST at CMAS
St. Louis ozone garden