Research

Air pollution risk to agriculture and forest health in China

Newton Fund Climate Science for Service Partnership China

China suffers high levels of ozone and aerosol pollution in megacities and rural and suburban areas. Ozone damages photosynthesis, reduces plant growth and biomass accumulation, limits crop yields, and affects stomatal control over plant transpiration of water vapour between the leaf surface and atmosphere. This international project will quantify the individual and combined effects of ozoneĀ and aerosol pollution on rice, wheat, maize and soybean crop yields and natural ecosystem productivity in China under present-day and future environmental conditions.

 

Ozone impacts on tropical vegetation; implications for forest productivity

NERC Standard Grant

This international project will provide the first comprehensive set of measurements of ozone effects on plant functioning and growth in tropical trees. Project deliverables will make it possible to provide credible assessments of the near-term impacts of changes in air quality (due to land-use and land cover, population and climate change) on tropical forests. These results would interest a diverse group of policy makers, land-managers and stake-holders interested in predictions of fundamental ecosystem services across tropical regions

 

Role of fire emissions in atmospheric composition-climate feedbacks

Met Office Hadley Centre

Fire is a key process in the Earth system, being driven by climate, but also affecting climate through changing the atmospheric composition and the terrestrial carbon cycle. This project develops a fully coupled vegetation-fire-chemistry-climate Earth system model. The model is applied to quantify the impacts of fire variability on atmospheric composition-climate interactions in past, present and future worlds. The dynamic coupling of the vegetation, fire, chemistry and climate offers an exciting new capability to explore the role of fire in the Earth system in a systematic and holistic way not previously available.

 

USA Projects to 2016

 

Using relationships between photosynthesis and formaldehyde column as a probe of isoprene emission

NASA Earth and Space Science Graduate Fellowship Program

 

Linking multi-scale measurements and models to advance understanding of BVOC-chemistry-climate interactions

NASA Atmospheric Composition Campaign Data Analysis and Modeling

 

Aviation emission impacts on surface air quality

USA Federal Aviation Administration

 

Experimental Interventions to Facilitate Clean Cookstove Adoption, Promote Clean Indoor Air, and Mitigate Climate Change

USA Environmental Protection Agency (Science To Achieve Results, STAR)

 

Anthropogenic land cover change impacts on climate and air quality

Leverhulme Trust UK Visiting Professorship, University of Exeter

 

Application of the NASA GISS global composition-climate modeling system to quantify the effects of aviation emissions on climate

USA Federal Aviation Administration

 

Using and improving an interactive climate model incorporating atmospheric composition: GISS-PUCCINI

NASA Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis Program

 

Towards a fully interactive climate model incorporating atmospheric composition: GISS ModelE

NASA Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis Program