Smoke from a number of agricultural fires is currently blanketing Thailand and Cambodia. This is shown below in the satellite image from the MODIS instrument on the TERRA satellite. The red dots are classed as ‘thermal anomalies’ by the satellite instrument and are usually indicative of fires burning in these locations. The majority of the fires are occurring in grass and cropland area ...[Read More]
AGU 2013 roundup
Now that the 2013 AGU Fall Meeting has ended, I thought I would roundup what I’ve been involved with over the week for both this blog and the Barometer Podcast, which I was recording each day with Sam Illingworth. Links to each piece are available below. Many thanks to all who have read and shared these over the past week. Recording the podcast at conferences is becoming a trend as we’ ...[Read More]
AGU 2013 Days 4 & 5: measurements & models
My fourth and fifth days at the AGU Fall Meeting involved dashing between multiple sessions to take in a number of talks on (surprise, surprise) aerosols! The main strand running through them from my point of view was how there are major efforts to construct large datasets of aerosol properties that can be used to test our understanding via numerical models. Aerosols are complex and tend to stick ...[Read More]
AGU 2013 Day 3: secondary organic aerosol – animal or vegetable?
My third day at the AGU 2013 Fall Meeting involved lots of talks on one of the trickiest parts of aerosol science – secondary organic aerosol (SOA). We’ve known for several years now that SOA is ubiquitous across the globe and it is often the most dominant aerosol chemical species in many environments and this is particularly true in the industrialised regions of the Northern Hemispher ...[Read More]
AGU 2013 day 2: aerosol emissions, climate & the IPCC
My second day at the AGU 2013 Fall Meeting revolved around more short-lived climate forcers, which I wrote about yesterday and also a broader session on the results from the recent IPCC Working Group 1 report. The latter was an opportunity for the community to quiz some of the lead authors of the report on a variety of issues including observations of the climate system, aerosol and clouds (yippee ...[Read More]
AGU 2013 day 1: Short-lived climate forcers
My first day at AGU 2013 revolved around sessions on short-live climate forcers, which are components in the atmosphere that have short lifetimes (compared to carbon dioxide for example) and generally warm the atmosphere. Reduction of these compounds, such as methane and black carbon, has been mooted as a way to reduce global mean temperatures in coming decades. This is summarised in the figure be ...[Read More]
A continent on fire
While preparing my poster for the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting, I downloaded some data on fire activity in South America for background on why we are interested in biomass burning in the region. I wanted to quickly check I had the data in the correct format, so I just plotted the coordinates of the fire counts without an outline of South America. I was surprised to see that the fire locations for Aug ...[Read More]
Spoiling the view
Probably the most obvious manifestation of air pollution comes when looking out of the window and scanning the horizon – does the landscape go on for miles or is the view reduced? The build-up of air pollution can often dramatically reduce visibility via a shroud of haze. On a recent trip to the Turkish Mediterranean coast near Antalya, the impact of air pollution on visibility was abundantl ...[Read More]
Do you think that’s air you’re breathing?
Air pollution has been a major issue in our atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, with the smoke emanating from the many factories leading to smog settling over our cities and countryside. The author Johanna Schonpenhauer remarked in 1830 that Manchester was: Dark and smoky from the coal vapours, it resembles a huge forge or workshop. As industrialisation and motor vehicles spread across the ...[Read More]
Cooking up some aerosol
Ever wondered how many aerosol particles are emitted by microwaving popcorn? Or how polluted a football match is? I’m going to assume your answer is no but it turns out that science has the answer anyway! Outdoor air pollution is a significant concern but air pollution indoors and in other enclosed spaces is of comparable importance. A US study estimated that around half of our exposure to a ...[Read More]