This is a past event.

Gabriele Pfister
National Center for Atmospheric Research

Air Quality is strongly affected by local meteorology and localized emission sources. Consequently, air quality tools have been developed to focus on local phenomena. However, air quality is not just a local problem. Observations of chemical tracers that have become available from space-borne sensors over the last decade helped to reveal the large geographical and temporal variability of atmospheric trace species and the strong connections between processes from local to global scales, defined as chemical weather.

In this talk I will discuss efforts in regards to linking the global, regional and local scales by integrating chemical observations from satellite, aircraft and ground with global and regional chemical transport modeling. The focus of the talk will be on the NASA Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field campaign in June 2008 over California. Using observations and modeling tools I will contrast the contributions of the different local emission sources and pollution inflow on surface air quality over California.