DATE: Tuesday, May 1, 2018
TIME: 12:30 pm - Room 101 (Refreshments served at 12:15 pm)
PLACE: Institute of Food Nutrition and Health,
61 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, New Jersey
Daniel Westervelt
ASSOCIATE RESEARCH SCIENTIST
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
LAMONT-DOHERTY EARTH OBSERVATORY
THE AIR QUALITY - CLIMATE CHANGE NEXUS: FROM THE NANO TO THE GLOBAL SCALE
Air pollution is a major threat to human health worldwide and also contributes to climate change. Conversely, climate change can influence air pollution through feedbacks on temperature, precipitation, wind, and other meteorological quantities. In this talk I will discuss several of my ongoing and completed projects at the nexus of atmospheric chemistry, air quality, and climate change, ranging from mechanistic investigation of aerosol formation and growth to regional and global air quality-climate interactions. Using three major global chemistry-climate models and a combination of in-situ and remote sensing data, I will demonstrate how air pollutants are changing the climate system and how the climate system is changing air pollution. Highlights will include the influence of regional aerosol emissions on tropical African precipitation, and air pollution responses over China, India, and the U.S. to global air pollutant emission pathways and climate change. Finally, I will present my vision for future research directions at the nexus of air quality and climate change.