Research

Overall

I will be taking the lead in developing a fire-adapted GEOS-Chem, which is a chemical transport model that simulates the movement and transformation of air pollutants in the atmosphere. This work is important because it will help us identify the most pressing areas for further research on the impacts of fire on human health and the environment, including the role of traditionally unstudied VOCs. To achieve the goal, I will apply joint experimental and modeling approaches with field measurements, chamber experiments, and satellite retrieval data, providing observational constraints from plume-scale to a wider scale.

Biomass Burning Emission

I aim to constrain emissions of VOCs from biomass burning (BB) emissions with recent field data and widespread ground measurements. In this work, we found that the wildland fire emissions are significantly underestimated in three commonly used fire inventories in the western US, likely driven by the low bias of dry matter burned in models. Trippling the fire emissiosn resolve the low bias of primary compounds (CO and primary VOCs) in fires but not for OVOCs, reflecting that the missing scondary production of OVOCs in the model.

Biomass Burning Chemistry

As the priority of this stage, I will work on exploring the missing OVOCs source and answering what uncharacterized VOCs are needed to include in the model based on the WE-CAN campaign. Specific focus will be on furan and its 4 derivatives (those VOCs containing 4-carbon and 1-oxygen aromatic ring). The GEOS-Chem mechanism will be evaluated along with the most explicit chemical mechanism of trace gas. The chemical impacts (e.g., ozone and oxygenated VOCs) from fire smoke will be investigated from regional and global schale.

Biomass Burning Transport and Heath Concerns

At a later stage, I will work to evaluate current 5 available injections parametrizations on plume transport and plume evolution and provide recomm. Finally, I will use our fire-adapted GEOS-Chem to provide the fire impacts on human health from regional to global scale.