NOAA's Climate Program awards grant to SWAC faculty members

October 12, 2021

A photo of the New York City skyline with an orange haze in the sky; photo by Urban Feel on Flickr. — Photo of smog on the New York City skyline by urbanfeel

Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office announced their awards of over $171 million for climate science and community resilience; two SWAC faculty members are among the recipients of this funding.

Drs. Dylan Millet and Timothy Griffis are co-principal investigators on a project to better understand volatile organic carbon (VOC) emissions that contribute to smog in New York City. This is part of a larger research initiative nicknamed AEROMMA: Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas (PDF). The team received nearly $600,000 in funding from the federal agency.

Fluxes of Reactive Organic Gases in New York: Direct Quantification by Multi-Instrument Eddy Covariance in Support of AEROMMA

Urban VOC emissions contribute to smog through formation of ozone and secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Quantifying urban VOC sources is a major challenge of importance for air quality and for understanding the reactive carbon cycle. This project will help address this challenge by directly quantifying the urban flux of reactive carbon flux by eddy covariance. Specifically, the project applies two complimentary time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometers to measure fluxes, gradients, and concentrations of an expansive suite of reactive VOCs from a tower in metropolitan New York as part of AEROMMA. The measurements will make a key contribution to the broader AEROMMA campaign by sampling a predominantly residential footprint that represents a critical component of the diverse NY landscape. The project provides significant broader impacts to the scientific community and to the general public through: i) enhanced VOC understanding for improving atmospheric models, ii) better source apportionment for more accurate air quality predictions, and iii) unique opportunities for public engagement around the science of air pollution.

Principal Investigator: Delphine Farmer, Colorado State University
Co-Principal Investigators: Dylan Millet and Timothy Griffis, University of Minnesota

Read more about the NOAA climate projects, including others related to emissions, air quality, and heat in urban areas.

Soil, Water, and Climate is located on the traditional and treaty land of the Dakota people, in the area known as Mnisóta Makhóčhe (the land of Minnesota).

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