December 2017: CAC PhD student Jesse Greenslade and researcher Jenny Fisher attended the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans, USA, where both gave oral presentations on their research. Jesse's attendance was supported by a UOW Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health HDR student travel grant.
November 2017: CAC joined the EMeRGe-Asia Mission. Megacity emissions affect the Earth?s radiative budget but our knowledge on megacity emissions is still quite limited and inadequate.The EMeRGe project was initiated and led by Prof. John Burrows FRS (University of Bremen, Germany). The project aims to improve the knowledge and prediction of the transport and transformation patterns of pollutant outflows from major population centers and will utilize the German Aerospace Centre?s (DLR) High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft (HALO). CAC researcher Voltaire Velazco participated in the EMeRGe workshop in Bremen then visited the groups of Prof. Koppmann in Wuppertal and the DLR near Munich to learn how to operate the portable air sampler and tracer release mechanism to be used during EMeRGe-Asia in March 2018.
November 2017: A new paper led by CAC's Jenny Fisher and co-authored by Nicholas Deutscher was published in Geoscientific Model Development. The paper describes an improved method for simulating carbon monoxide, a tracer of pollution and fire influence, in the GEOS-Chem model. It also uses the Australian TCCON data to highlight the benefits of using the new simulation.
November 2017: Members of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Scientific Steering Committee were charmed by the local resident kangaroos at Murramarang during their annual meeting in November. The meeting was hosted by CAC director Clare Murphy thanks to sponsorship from the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health?s Forefront of Research Events funding. CAC also hosted the 2017 Atmospheric Composition and Chemistry Observations and Modelling Conference.
November 2017: Dr. Michel Grutter de la Mora of the Centro de Ciencias de la Atmosfera in the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, visited the University of Wollongong to see the observatory operated by the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry and discuss opportunities for furthering existing collaborations in the field of solar remote sensing of atmospheric trace gases.
October 2017: CAC members David Griffith and Voltaire Velazco, along with scientists from Japan?s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), celebrated with the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) the formal launch and outreach of TCCON Philippines. During the meeting, First Philippine Holdings (FPH) Chairman and CEO Federico R. Lopez said ?we at [FPH] believe that every business has a choice and we chose to go beyond our ?business fence? and contribute to the common good for the benefit of our environment and the people. Thus, in 2016 we declared to commit all our businesses to a low-carbon and sustainable operation to keep our employees, the communities and our assets out of harm from climate change?. EDC President and COO Richard B. Tantoco said the government can use analyses derived from TCCON data to validate the Philippine carbon footprint. The footprint will contribute to the world?s aspiration of climate stabilization by 2050 and serve as a guide for Philippine climate actions. The event was attended by representatives from the government and scientists from different universities. The project was covered in news articles in the Business Mirror and the Manila Standard.
September 2017: As part of the Scientific basis for the Montreal Protocol, a meeting was held at Stratford-upon-Avon in September. CAC member Stephen Wilson is leading the chapter assessing the impact of ozone depleting substances on air quality and atmospheric composition. The meeting produced an update for the countries that signed the Protocol, and prepared for the full assessment which will be completed in 2018.
August 2017: CAC members David Griffith, Nicholas Deutscher and Beata Bukosa attended the International Carbon Dioxide Conference (ICDC10) in Interlaken, Switzerland, which was also the 10th anniversary of this event. During the conference they presented the research related to carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle, including observations from the TCCON network, interpretation of in-situ and remote greenhouse gas measurements across Australia and radon tracer flux measurements of different greenhouse gases in agricultural environments.
August 2017: CAC researchers David Griffith and Graham Kettlewell co-authored a paper in Nature Scientific Reports. Atmospheric methane and carbon monoxide are always depleted and sometimes totally consumed in limestone caves such those at Jenolan in the Blue Mountains, SE Australia. The researchers monitored these gases over several years with a suite of other measurements, and showed that the depletion of methane is due to methane oxidizing bacteria living on cave surfaces. They also identified 88 new methanotrophs from the caves.
August 2017: CAC member Jenny Fisher presented an invited talk at the 2017 Atmospheric Chemistry Gordon Research Conference. Her talk, titled "Fates of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Presence of (Some) NOx: Implications for the Remote Atmosphere" was part of a session on Chemistry in the Remote Atmosphere.
July 2017: Laser Chemistry Laboratory PhD student Cameron Bright won back-to-back best poster prizes at the Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry (ANZSMS) conference in Adelaide and then from the Physical Chemistry Division at the RACI Congress in Melbourne.
July 2017: CAC's deputy director Adam Trevitt has been in the news! His group's research using lasers to probe the chemistry at the surface of a single droplet at a time was featured in the Illawarra Mercury, and he also did an interview with the Vox FM 106.9 Illiawarra "Monday Grapevine" radio show.
July 2017: A new paper co-authored by CAC member Jenny Fisher was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Led by Christopher Chan Miller from Harvard (a CAC alum!), the paper uses aircraft observations to better understand glyoxal and its use as a constraint for isoprene emissions.
July 2017: CAC member and Laser Chem Lab leader Adam Trevitt received the 2017 Michael Guilhaus Research Award. The Guilhaus Award of $10,000, supported in 2017 by Waters and Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry (ANZSMS), is granted to an early career researcher (<10 yrs from award of PhD) to support innovative research in the field of mass spectrometry. The award honours the work of Professor Michael Guilhaus, a pioneer of modern mass spectrometry instrumentation development, and an advocate of early career researchers in Australia.
July 2017: CAC hosted a group of visiting HSC Chemistry students from Warrawong High School. Six high school students spent the morning learning about the research pathways of CAC's PhD students and technical staff members, including Travis Naylor, Doreena Dominick, Bea Bukosa, Joel Wilson, Chris Roulston, and Cameron Bright. They also visited the Laser Chemistry and Atmospheric Chemistry Labs, where they took part in demos of the techniques and equipment used in the labs. Pictures from the event are available from the .
July 2017: CAC researcher Nicholas Deutscher received $689K in funding from the Australian National Low Emissions Coal Research & Development Targeted Program for the project "Developing and verifying an atmospheric assurance system for the Gippsland near-shore environment." Jointly led by UOW and the University of Melbourne, the project also involves CAC members David Griffith and Travis Naylor.
June 2017: PhD student Beata Bukosa attended a one week Climate Change Winter School at the University of New South Wales in Sydney hosted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. The winter school focused on the scientific fundamentals of climate change. It also involved sessions where the students could learn how to use the Monash Simple Climate Model and workshops where the participants had to hypothesise the effect of different scenario changes on Earth's climate.
June 2017: PhD student Jesse Greenslade represented CAC at the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health round of UOW's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. Jesse's presentation, If a tree grows up in the forest, with nobody around to hear it, does it still emit isoprene? explained his thesis research using satellite formaldehyde observations to estimate isoprene emissions in Australia, and why this work matters.
June 2017: Jenny Fisher presented a seminar titled Thinking outside the (grid) box: combining modelling with aircraft observations to understand the nitrogen chemistry of the atmosphere at the University of Sydney's School of Chemistry seminar series.
June 2017: CAC had a strong presence at the recent joint NDACC Infrared working group and TCCON annual meetings at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. Talks were presented by Nicholas Deutscher, David Griffith, Nicholas Jones, Clare Murphy and Voltaire Velalzco who also presented a poster.
June 2017: Clare Murphy attended two days of talks and workshops related to the UGPN NEST-SEES project at the University of Surrey (June 5th and 6th). She delivered a lecture on open-path measurements for air quality assessment and took part in panel discussions regarding future challenges for air quality, climate and health. She has been recognised as an official collaborator in the newly established Global Centre for Clean Air Research at the University of Surrey.
May 2017: CAC PhD student Beata Bukosa visited Dylan Jones' research group at the University of Toronto. Beata worked on the creation of a new carbon simulation in the 3D Global Chemical Transport Model GEOS-Chem. This new simulation will couple the currently separate CO2, CH4 and CO simulations which should improve the representation of these gases in the model. During this visit Beata also attended the 5th Carbon Assimilation Workshop where she presented her work and introduced the joint CO2-CH4-CO simulation project she was working on with the Jones group.
May 2017: Students Bea Bukosa and Jesse Greenslade and researcher Jenny Fisher represented CAC at the 8th International GEOS-Chem Conference at Harvard University. Between them, they presented two posters and a talk, attended several model clinics, and ran a working group meeting!
April 2017: CAC joins forces with Japan?s NIES and the Energy Development Corporation of the Philippines to establish the first Total Carbon Column Observing Network Station in Southeast Asia. A unique collaborative project spearheaded and coordinated by CAC researcher Voltaire Velazco with mentor David Griffith brings together UOW, the Energy Development Corp. (EDC Philippines), a world leader in geothermal energy production, and Japan?s National Inst. for Environmental Studies (NIES) - Japan?s forefront in environmental research, to establish a total carbon observing column network (TCCON) station in the Philippines, described in a new paper led by Voltaire. TCCON Philippines will be the primary tropical validation site for Japan?s GOSAT-2 satellite and is already providing data to NASA?s OCO-2 mission.
April 2017: CAC undergrad (and future Honours student) Jack Simmons' 51-day voyage to Antarctica earlier this year has been profiled in the video Journey of a lifetime and story Out to Sea by UOW's The Stand publication.
March 2017: CAC research scientist Nicholas Jones travelled to Sondakyla, in northern Finland, to take part in a comparison of portable low resolution solar spectrometers to retrieve CO2, CH4 and other gases. The comparison, part of the TCCON program, will run throughout 2017. The photo shows Nicholas setting up the solar tracker.
March 2017: CAC said farewell to visiting research fellow Dr Nsikanabasi Umo. Nsikanabasi spent two months at UOW using the GEOS-Chem model to estimate the contribution of non-Australian background sources to surface-level ozone in Australia in support of the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes hub. We are hoping we will see him back at UOW soon!
February 2017: CAC PhD student Jesse Greenslade spent two weeks visiting the research group of Professor Paul Palmer at the University of Edinburgh. Jesse worked with the Palmer group on his research using satellite observations to quantify biogenic emissions (part of an ARC Discovery Project) - and also managed time to try haggis and blood pudding and visit 3 museums and a castle!
January-February 2017: Three CAC PhD students -- Doreena Dominic, Jesse Greenslade and Beata Bukosa -- are attending the European Research Courses of Atmospheres (ERCA). ERCA is an international course on atmospheric physics and chemistry, held in Grenoble, France with participants and lecturers from all over the world. The course covers a broad range of climate related topics with high quality lectures, practicals, group projects and debates. Moreover, it gives the opportunity to interact and discuss research with peers and lecturers, to get feedback from them and have an insight on their methods and approaches to different scientific questions and problems.
January 2017: CAC undergrad Jack Simmons is headed down to the ice near Antarctica on the RV Investigator. This opportunity is the result of a volunteer scheme through the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry as part of the Polar Cell Aerosol Nucleation project being undertaken by the Oceans and Atmosphere division at CSIRO. You can follow his progress on his blog or at the voyage blog. The project was also profiled in an article in The Guardian.
January 2017: Dr Nsikanabasi Umo from the Federal University Lafia joins CAC as a Visiting Fellow for January-February. Nsikanabasi will be working with CAC member Jenny Fisher on using the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to estimate the contribution of non-Australian and non-anthropogenic sources to ozone (called the "background ozone") in Australian cities. This work forms a contribution to CAC's work as part of the Department of the Environment's Clean Air and Urban Landscape Hub.
January 2017: During their visit to Malaysia, CAC member Clare Murphy, masters student Chris Roulston and collaborator Tom Smith (of King?s College London) visited Prof Mohd Talib Latif of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, to discuss possible future collaborations to study the devastating air quality impacts of peat fires in the region.
January 2017: CAC member Clare Murphy and masters student Chris Roulston visited Kuala Lumpur to study particulate pollutants emitted by peat fires that cause the persistent ?haze? across Malaysia. The photo shows the ?pop-up haze laboratory? hosted in the yard of Prof Cathy Yule of Monash Malaysia and Tom Smith our collaborator from King?s College London.