Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

Exposure to atmospheric aerosols is the leading environmental cause of premature mortality. Designing effective mitigation strategies to tackle this air pollution challenge requires a deep understanding of aerosol sources and evolution in the atmosphere. This is complicated by the myriad natural and anthropogenic sources of particles which vary around the world. Global models are often used to estimate PM2.5 exposure and health impacts, but, of course, important gaps and uncertainties remain. In this talk, I'll aim to show how we can make progress on the modeling front and discuss how we can tackle gaps in our understanding of emissions, chemical formation, and global change feedbacks on aerosols. I'll illustrate these by discussing some of my group's work on Indian air pollution, smoke from fires, bioaerosol, sulfate from DMS, and the impacts of land use change. I'll also address the implications of the recent strengthening of the WHO air quality guidelines for PM2.5.