NC A&T Atmospheric Chemistry Team Participating in the NSF-NOAA-NCAR WINTER
Field Project
Undergraduate and graduate atmospheric science programs at NC A&T provide unique
opportunities for students to develop career skills through active learning strategies. The most
recent example of this is participation in the national research collaboration Wintertime
INvestigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity – WINTER.
Emission of man-made pollutants to the
atmosphere is a year-round phenomenon.
Atmospheric chemical transformations,
which play a large role in defining the
impact associated with these emissions,
have a strong seasonal dependence. In the
warmer and more photochemically active
summer months, strong oxidant formation
leads to the rapid production of multiple
secondary pollutants, such as ozone and
organic aerosol. In winter, short-lived
primary pollutants oxidize more slowly,
often driven by multiphase processes, and
consequently affect wider geographic areas
downwind of source regions. Relatively
little is known about budgets of primary
pollutants and their ultimate fate during the winter season.
NC A&T faculty and students are contributing to the NSF funded WINTER
(http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/groups/csd7/measurements/2015winter) project that supports
collaborative research among university partners, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that will
provide detailed, aircraft-based measurements to address the seasonality of atmospheric pollutant
processes. The NSF C-130 aircraft will be based in the mid-Atlantic region over six weeks in
January-February 2015. Flights will take place on scales ranging from investigations of local
sources (urban, power plant, agricultural) to longer-range transport. Results will critically inform
atmospheric chemical models for ozone, aerosols and a variety of other primary and secondary
pollutants.
The NCA&T collaborative Energy & Environmental Systems (EES) Department and Physics
Department Atmospheric Chemistry group (Dr. Solomon Bililign’s group
http://www.ncat.edu/academics/schools-colleges1/cas/academic
departments/physics/people/bililign/Group%20members.html) is participating in the WINTER
project. Participants include: Dr. Marc Fiddler, research scientist; Jaime Green, EES PhD Title
III HBGI Fellowship student; and Steven G. Blanco Garcia, undergraduate physics major. The
team will have principal responsibility for the operation of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) instrument
and the reduction of the data, leading to the writing of a paper on SO2 measurements during
WINTER. Through this involvement, NC A&T is contributing to improved, science-based
atmospheric pollution forecasts, prevention strategies, and emission regulations.