Talk Title: Staring into the Fire: Using Observations to Understand Wildfires and Smoke
Abstract: Recent increases in western U.S. wildfire activity have made wildland fires and the associated smoke a significant challenge for society. This problem will only grow as the climate warms. I will discuss how the atmospheric science community has used both new in situ observations and...
Talk Title: The Thermal Histories of Solar System Moons and Small Bodies
Abstract: The heat flow of a planetary body plays a major role in defining its evolution and current composition, driving processes from internal differentiation during its formation period through geological activity at the current time. However, these same active processes erase many of the surface signatures that would allow us to reconstruct its long-term thermal history. In this talk, I will present novel observational approaches, using primarily the ALMA interferometer...
Talk Title: Quantifying causes and consequences of historical changes in extreme climate conditions
Abstract: Although the world is making progress in ramping up ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through global, national, local and non-governmental frameworks, it has now also become clear that we are already being impacted by the global warming that has already occurred...
Talk Title: Classification, implication, and parametrization of surface heterogeneity and its interaction with the dynamics of the lower atmosphere
Abstract: Land-atmosphere exchange and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics over heterogeneous surfaces are of significance to a wide array of geophysical and engineering applications. Yet, despite over five decades of intense...
Abstract:Water is essential for life as we know it and Earth is often referred to as a water world. But where Earth’s water comes from, how much was accreted, how much was retained in its deep interior, and how it has been recycled through deep time have proven exceptionally challenging questions that require a broad, multi-disciplinary perspective. In this talk I will provide an overview of recent work on these questions with a slant...
Talk Title: The Evolution of the Marine Carbonate Factory and the Rise of Biomineralizing Animals
Abstract:Formation of calcium carbonate is one of the primary pathways by which carbon is recycled between the ocean-atmosphere system and the solid Earth. On long timescales, changes in the magnitude of the marine carbonate factory—the...
Talk Title: Rocky planet formation with primordial H2-rich atmospheres: Implications for Super-Earths, Sub-Neptunes and Earth
Abstract:Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are the most abundant exoplanets discovered to date. Recent models of atmospheric evolution and erosion by core-powered mass loss and/or photo-evaporation suggest that these two populations of exoplanets might have been born as one. In my talk, I will explore the question as to how primary,...
Vertical velocities in the ocean are prohibitively slow to measure directly, so physical oceanographers have been attempting to estimate them by other means for several decades. There is strong motivation to do so; upwelling fuels marine life by bringing nutrient-rich water into the sunlit surface layer. Upwelling also affects the atmosphere by cooling the surface, which affects wind and clouds. The surprising abundance and diversity of life—from corals to fish to seabirds—around equatorial islands, has been...
Abstract: What happens under volcanoes in the months leading up to eruption? How does a magmatic system prepare for an eruption? And why are some eruptions more explosive than others? Crystal clocks are providing some answers to these questions. Chemical zonation preserved inside crystals and their inclusions are some of the...
Abstract: Wildfires and other types of biomass burning are a seasonal phenomenon in different land ecosystems around the world. These fires are estimated to consume biomass containing a total of 2-5 petagrams of carbon globally every year, generating heat energy and emitting smoke plumes that comprise different species of aerosols and trace...
Talk Title: From Microbial to Global: What Mercury Stable Isotopes Can Tell us about Mercury Bioaccumulation
Abstract: Mercury (Hg) stable isotopes have become a standard approach to study Hg sources and processes in the environment. Despite the power of these tools, applying Hg isotopes to understand source to receptor relationships can be difficult due to the myriad of...
Talk Title: Promises and Pitfalls of Paleoredox Proxies in Carbonate Rocks
Abstract: The redox state of the oceans strongly influences organic carbon burial, habitability for marine biota, and biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and critical redox-sensitive elements. There are various methods for reconstructing oxygenation and deoxygenation through Earth history: Of these,...
Abstract: As more than 70% of fossil fuel-based carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted in urban areas, urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions play a crucial role in achieving the emission reduction goals. In addition, air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides (NOX), and particulate matter (PM) adversely affect urban air quality and are harmful to human health. In this talk, I will present new observational methods and modelling approaches to address two of the most urgent challenges of our time: climate change and air pollution.
