Emissions and Chemistry of Air Pollutants in Urban Areas and from Wildfires and Oil and Gas Production

"Emissions and Chemistry of Air Pollutants in Urban Areas and from Wildfires and Oil and Gas Production with Joost de Gouw, Professor of Chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder."

"Emissions and Chemistry of Air Pollutants in Urban Areas and from Wildfires and Oil and Gas Production with Joost de Gouw, Professor of Chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder."

In this seminar, Joost de Gouw will present new results from three different research directions in his group. First, the chemistry of urban atmospheres is continually changing as motor vehicle emissions have been reduced effectively and other sources of pollutants are becoming dominant. Results from a recent field study in Los Angeles will be presented. Compared with the earlier CalNex study in 2010 at the same location, direct emissions were found to be lower, but oxidation rates were higher and, perhaps as a result, photochemical product concentrations were similar or higher than in 2010. Second, wildfires have become a major driver of urban air quality. An extreme case occurred in December of 2021 in Boulder County, when the Marshall Fire burned over 1,000 homes within hours, in a disaster that is eerily similar to the recent fire in Lahaina on Maui. Results from a field study conducted shortly after the Marshall Fire will be presented, which showed how the air quality effects from the fire lingered for weeks, especially inside homes. Third, the domestic production of oil and gas in the U.S. are near all-time highs due to the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The emissions of air pollutants and methane from this increased industrial activity have received widespread attention. Results will be presented of the research to constrain nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds and methane emissions using satellite data. Enhanced formaldehyde over oil and gas production regions was mostly attributed to secondary formation from the hydrocarbons released from this industrial activity.

Joost de Gouw is a Professor in the Chemistry Department of the University of Colorado Boulder, and a Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). He earned a PhD in Physics from the University of Utrecht in 1994 and worked from 2001 through 2018 as a Research Scientist with CIRES and the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. Joost de Gouw’s research interests include the sources and chemical reactions of organic compounds and related air pollutants in the atmosphere, and how these processes impact air quality and climate. Joost de Gouw’s research group uses mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and data from satellite remote sensing instruments in their work. Joost de Gouw was a co-recipient of the Colorado Governor’s Award for High-Impact Research in 2012 and 2014, was a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in 2017 and 2018, and was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2020.

Open to the Harvard community. Visit the event page for more information.

Contact: Ester Ramirez, eramirez@seas.harvard.edu