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What's cool 2021

Highlights from the UOW Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry

  • UOW Researcher-led Team is Co-recipient of NASA Group Achievement Award:

The NASA Group Achievement Award was conferred on CAMP2Ex (Clouds, Aerosols, Monsoonal Processes - Philippines Experiment).

UOW-CAC Researcher Dr. Voltaire A. Velazco is leader and science chief investigator of the CAMP2Ex-HABAGAT* team within this high-value NASA mission composed of several international teams. Velazco’s team supported NASA’s airborne measurements aimed to better understand water vapor, aerosols and gas-phase chemistry at the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) Philippines site (Velazco et al., 2017a, 2017b).

NASA's most prestigious honor awards are approved by the Administrator and presented to a number of carefully selected individuals and groups of individuals, both Government and non-Government, who have distinguished themselves by making outstanding contributions to the Agency's mission.

  • Professor Clare Murphy, Director of the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry, was lead author of A Clean Air Plan for Sydney. The paper is a blueprint for better air quality in Sydney. Read the full article here.

In 2017, CAC researcher Voltaire A. Velazco travelled to several institutes in Germany, including the German Space Agency (DLR) to meet with several groups to conceptualize an aircraft validation for the Burgos TCCON site within the EMeRGe Mission (Effect of Megacities on the transport and transformation of pollutants on the Regional and Global scales). After a massive undertaking in organization, flight planning, logistics and painstaking measurements coordinated and led on the ground by Velazco, the Burgos TCCON station was validated in 2018. The results are now in a paper on the first ever validation involving an EM27/SUN spectrometer at two TCCON sites during two aircraft campaigns, published in AMTD: https://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/amt-2020-170/ This is also the first publication within the EMeRGe-Asia mission.

  • Media interest in the groups work relating to smoke and fires continued with Clare Murphy giving interviews to the Sydney Morning Herald and for the ABC’s 7:30 report, which is screening a four-part series on the bushfires from 9th – 12th March. Clare’s interview was filmed at the COALA-JOEYS campaign site at Cataract and will screen on Wednesday 11th March. Ross Bradstock from CSES also gave extensive interviews for the programs.

  • Media interest in the COALA campaign continued with a particular focus on the smoke sampled during the early stages of the campaign. Clare Murphy was interviewed by the ABC and appeared on the 7:30 report (see https://iview.abc.net.au/show/7-30 ) and ABC news online (see https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-11/what-was-actually-in-the-bushfire-haze-you-were-breathing/12042686)

  • CAC Honours student Sam Limbrey was awarded a 2019 ACEDD Scholar Award in recognition of his outstanding scholarship in the Bachelor of Science (Honours), in the same week that he submitted his Honours thesis. Congratulations, Sam!

  • CAC PhD student Susan John attended the 2020 European Research Course on Atmospheres. Susan writes about her experience: “ERCA 2020 was a remarkable experience for me as an early career researcher. ERCA was a festival of knowledge, fun activities and a platform for making friends around the world. During the one month of ERCA, we had lectures on interdisciplinary topics in Earth science including a group project where we got a chance to work together as a team to build a science project based on our ideas, also many other interesting activities including group discussions and debates. ERCA’s international negotiation simulation on climate change was one of my favourite program. The goal of the program is to better understand non-scientific issues related to the fight against, and adaptation to, climate change. The major attraction of ERCA is about the OBSERVATOIRE de Haute Provence (OHP), where we were able to have a real and fun experience with the pratical sessions of learning telescopes and other atmospheric measuring instruments and platforms. All these activities helped me to gain a better understanding of the concepts as well as a systematic way of approaching and presenting scientific ideas. ERCA will be incomplete without saying about the one-day snowshoe hiking in the Alpes to enjoy the chilled beauty of the mountains.

  • CAC researchers Jenny Fisher and Clare Murphy were interviewed for Australia’s Summer of Smoke, an article in UOW’s The Stand exploring links between smoke, air pollution exposure, health, exercise, and sport performance.

  • Air quality professionals from the team at DPIE visited the COALA-JOEYS campaign site near Cataract Dam for a tour of AIRBOX and the other measurements taking place during the nine week campaign.

 

  •  PhD student Jesse Greenslade officially completed his PhD. Jesse is now an intern at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
  • CAC takes possession of new lab and roof top building in Molecular Horizons. Photo shows Steve Wilson explaining the sun angles that we can view from our new location.

  • Steve Wilson and Clare Murphy gave various interviews to journalists interested in the composition of the smoke from the bushfire crisis, including an ABC Illawarra radio interview (Steve) and a buzzfeed interview (Clare)
  • The COALA-JOEYS field campaign starts! This is a major international atmospheric chemistry campaign aimed at understanding the emissions of chemicals into the atmosphere from trees and soils and the subsequent chemistry that forms fine particulate matter and ozone. The campaign involves a collaboration between UOW researchers from the CAC and CSES, University of Sydney, CSIRO, ANSTO, DPIE, Georgia Tech USA, Nagoya University Japan, Lancaster University UK and University California Irvine USA. In the first weeks of the campaign the site near Cataract Dam was impacted by smoke plumes from the nearby bushfires. The measurements made during these bushfires events will almost certainly comprise the most comprehensive chemical composition measurements ever made in smoke from Australian bushfires. The data is likely to be of great interest to those studying the long term health effects of exposure to the smoke suffered by so many Australians this summer.

 

  • PhD student Beata Bukosa officially completed her PhD. Beata is now a postdoc at NIWA in Wellington, New Zealand.
  • Frances Phillips (pictured) and Clare Murphy gave talks at the CASANZ NSW branch annual meeting in Sydney

  • Most staff and student members of CAC gave presentations at the Atmospheric Composition & Chemistry Observations & Modelling Conference (incorporating the Cape Grim Annual Science Meeting 2019) at CSIRO  Oceans and Atmosphere, Climate Science Centre in Aspendale.

  • CAC Director Clare Murphy attended the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Scientific Steering Committee in Mexico City to discuss priorities for supporting atmospheric chemistry towards a sustainable future.

  • Dave Griffith travelled to Brisbane to install instruments in AIRBOX aboard the RV Investigator which sets sail for a long summer voyage around to Freemantle via Darwin. AIRBOX will be measuring atmospheric composition across the tropics in the coming months. After docking in Freemantle, AIRBOX will be transported to Cataract for the COALA-JOEYS biogenics campaign.
  • CAC students Susan, Jhonathan and Neil gave great talks at the inaugural SEALS postgraduate conference at Kioloa.
  • Nicholas Deutscher elected as Deputy Director for the CAC cluster at group meeting.
  • Travis Naylor and Hamish McDougall spent 3 days (October 2-4) at the Dutson Downs site, where we are operating a Spectronus as well as an open-path NIR instrument as part of the GipNet project. Travis and Hamish spent time doing general instrument maintenance, especially checking the performance of the OP-NIR after an incident involving some bulls. Hamish also took the opportunity to take several sets of VOC tube measurements near both the Spectronus and OP-NIR, to assess the VOCs potentially emitted from the organic recycling facility and a wastewater wetland.
  • CAC Honorary Professor Ian Galbally is the joint lead author on a new paper "Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Tropospheric ozone from 1877 to 2016, observed levels, trends and uncertainties"

  • Clare Murphy and Frances Phillips gave talks at the CASANZ conference in Queenstown, NZ where they presented work from the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub on air quality in Sydney.

  • CAC major equipment grand bid, led by Nicholas Deutscher and titled “A new spectrometer to future proof the Atmospheric Remote Sensing Program at UOW”  was awarded $250,000 in funding towards the cost of replacing the high resolution solar remote sensing spectrometer. If fully funded, the new spectrometer will be located on the atmospheric platform of the new Molecular Horizon’s building and will be run in parallel with the existing spectrometer for ~ 1 year to ensure compatibility of the time-series of atmospheric composition from Wollongong.

  • CAC staff including Graham Kettlewell got a peak preview of the new atmospheric research platform and laboratory on the top floor of the new Molecular Horizon’s building.

  • Volitaire Velazco travelled to Burgos to work on the TCCON site as part of the NASA CAMP2Ex campaign.

  • Nicholas Deutscher, Graham Kettlewell and Nicholas Jones visited the Darwin TCCON site. During this time they successfully re-installed the solar tracker and finally re-commenced taking TCCON measurements. As an extension to the Fiducial Reference Measurements for Greenhouse Gases (FRM4GHG) project, they also took the UOW-developed Solar IRCube and an EM27/SUN and installed these on the roof of the container to allow for several months of comparative measurements, assessing the low spectral resolution instruments compared to the TCCON gold standard.
  •  Clare Murphy was interviewed by The Wire about the huge fires in the Amazon rainforest – see http://thewire.org.au/story/how-the-amazon-rainforest-fires-impact-us-all/  
  • 2019 has seen 3 PhD students reach the end of their studies: Doreena Dominick, Bea Bukosa and Jesse Greenslade. We are looking forward to Doreena’s graduation in November, meanwhile Bea and Jesse are awaiting examiners comments on their theses.  
  • Members of the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry and friends assembled for a seminar celebrating the first 5 decades of Dave Griffith’s scientific career. The event was held at Kiama on the eve of Dave’s 70th birthday.

  • CAC Director Clare Murphy was interviewed as part of Chemistry World’s feature article on Wildfires and Atmospheric Chemistry.
  • Vicarious radiometric calibration of passive optical instruments from satellites is carried out on the large homogeneous desert environment in Nevada, USA. A new paper published in ESSD (Velazco et al., 2019) presented the opportunities that Alice Springs, Australia could offer in the context of satellite surface products and associated emissivity assessments. In addition to near-undisturbed atmospheric conditions, the desert environment provides high surface reflectivity, which is needed for satellite validation purposes. By investigating measurements over the Australian desert from Japan’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) and using a portable FTIR spectrometer with a UOW-built fairing and clamshell cover to endure the harsh desert conditions, the UOW team made the first steps in making desert Australia a potential future site for validation of space-based sensors.

FTIR Spectrometer

  • Breaking the Tie: Burgos TCCON. NASA highlights the quality and importance of the Burgos TCCON data (Velazco et al., 2017) in improving the recent version 9 ACOS retrieval algorithm for OCO-2 at the 15th International Workshop on Greenhouse Gas Measurements from Space (IWGGMS-15), held in Sapporo, Japan. Dr. O’Dell from the NASA ACOS team stated that “Space-based measurements of the column-mean dry air mole fraction of carbon dioxide (XCO2), if made with sufficient accuracy and precision, offer a potential goldmine of information on CO2 surface fluxes at both small and large spatial scales. However, possible biases in satellite XCO2 will create spurious fluxes and are a limiting factor in utilizing these data” (O’Dell et al., 2019, IWGGMS 15 Abstract Collection). In their presentation, Burgos TCCON was shown to be excellently situated to “break the tie” in bias estimates to within 0.5 ppm-1.0 ppm
  • UOW was ranked in the top 75 universities for Atmospheric Sciences in the world in the Shanghai Ranking's 2019 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.
  • What is the effect of ozone depletion, and the response  - the Montreal protocol - that was agreed upon internationally? Two UOW scientists, Stephen Wilson from CAC and Sharon Robinson, are authors of a new review of the answer to this question in Nature Sustainability. The work highlights the impact of the ozone hole on the southern hemisphere climate, an interaction that was not recognized back when the original agreements were signed. While significant changes have been identified, these have been limited by global action: the world avoided would have been much less hospitable for life.
  • CAC researcher Clare Murphy spent time on study leave in the UK visiting collaborators at the London School of Economics, Cranfield University and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory before heading home to Wollongong via the iCACGP meeting in Montreal. She is pictured here with Professor Neil Harris at Cranfield University during a visit to the FAAM airborne laboratory.

  • After two years of successful operation and the validation within EMeRGe-Asia, the Burgos TCCON station has been recognized as a “full” TCCON station by the TCCON steering committee at the annual meeting held in Wanaka, New Zealand. Within the EMeRGe campaign in Asia, profiles of CO2 and CH4 measured on board of the "High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft" (HALO) were provided to the Burgos TCCON station in order to fulfil this requirement. This is a significant contribution to TCCON and to the validation of space-based greenhouse gases remote sensing satellites like GOSAT, GOSAT-2, OCO-2, TROPOMI, etc., as well as to science in Southeast Asia (http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/emerge/home/news10.html).

TCCON and NDACC Members at the annual meeting in Wanaka, New Zealand

  • A new paper on CO2, CH4 and CO distribution, sources and sinks and their co-variation in the Australian region led by CAC PhD student Beata Bukosa was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The authors used shipborne measurements of the carbon greenhouse-gases together with the GEOS-Chem model to quantify and constrain the processes driving the changes of these gases. Their results point to overestimates of CH4 from coal burning and underestimate of all three gases from biomass burning. They also identified missing sources from fossil fuel, biofuel, oil, gas, coal, livestock, biomass burning and the biosphere in the model, pointing to the need to further develop and evaluate greenhouse-gas emission inventories for the Australian continent. Other CAC co-authors include Nicholas Deutscher, Jenny Fisher, Clare Murphy and David Griffith.
  • CAC researcher Jenny Fisher was awarded third place as a finalist in the Australian round for the ASPIRE Prize. The APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education (“ASPIRE”) is an annual award which recognizes young scientists who have demonstrated a commitment to both excellence in scientific research, as evidenced by scholarly publication and cooperation with scientists from other APEC member economies.
  • The annual joint Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) and Network for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change- InfraRed Working Group (NDACC-IRWG) Meeting was held from May 19-23 in Wanaka, New Zealand, hosted by the New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). Around 50 experts from these networks gathered to discuss scientific progress and future directions, and to represent their TCCON and NDACC measurement sites. TCCON co-chair and deputy chair, David Griffith and Nicholas Deutscher, attended the meeting, along with site PIs Voltaire Velazco and Nicholas Jones. They were joined by former CAC Phd student Beata Bukosa, in her first week in a new role working as a postdoctoral fellow for NIWA. All CAC representatives presented and contributed to running sessions within the meeting. During the meeting, the Burgos TCCON site, co-operated by CAC, NIES, and EDC, was elevated to full TCCON status by unanimous approval of the TCCON steering committee.
  • CAC PhD student Beata Bukosa and researcher Jenny Fisher attended the 9th International GEOS-Chem Meeting (IGC9) at Harvard University. Beata presented her work developing a new model capability to simultaneously simulate multiple carbon greenhouse gases, and both attended the myriad talks, posters, clinics, and model development working groups. Jenny also attended the GEOS-Chem Steering Committee meeting held after the conference.
  • OCO-3, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 satellite, launched successfully from Cape Canaveral on Saturday 4th May on its way to the International Space Station. CAC researchers are closely involved in the validation of OCO carbon dioxide measurements.
  • CAC researcher David Griffith presented an invited lecture on the impact of isotopic variations on measurements of atmospheric greenhouse gases at the European Geophysical Union 2019 General Assembly. He also presented papers on open-path FTIR greenhouse gas measurements as part of the Gipnet project for detecting fugitive GHG plumes, and solar remote sensing at the Burgos, Philippines site (all with other UOW coauthors).
  • CAC researcher David Griffith visited the Korean Research Institute for Standards and Science (KRISS, S. Korea) and Laboratory for Science of Climate and Environment (France) to advise and collaborate on applications and use of the UoW-Ecotech Spectronus Greenhouse Gas analyser and on solar remote sensing measurements. The Spectronus is being introduced into the pan-European ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observing System) greenhouse gas measurement and research programs.
  • Whilst at Macquarie Island, CAC members Clare Murphy and Alan Griffiths undertook some checks and tests on the instruments in the Clean Air Lab, including lowering and checking on the inlet mast and leak checking the radon detector.

Antarctic voyage Murphy

  • CAC members Clare Murphy and Alan Griffiths were the Voyage 4 researchers aboard the Australian Antarctic Divisions Aurora Australis resupply voyage to Macquarie Island as part of the CAMMPCAN project. In addition to running the AIRBOX suite of instruments in the Southern Ocean, the team captured an interesting dataset at port in Hobart as the city was impacted by the recent Tasmanian fires. This may be the most comprehensive set of aerosol phase measurements ever made within a smoke plume in Australia.

Antarctic voyage Murphy

Antarctic voyage Murphy

Antarctic voyage Murphy

  • CAC researcher Voltaire Velazco presented his work and talked about adventures in the field at the Uni in the Brewery event, along with two colleagues from the School of Earth, Atmospheric, and Life Sciences (Marian Wong and Dominique Tanner). Watch the event online!
  • CAC welcomed two new PhD students. Jhonathan Ramirez Gamboa will focus on the COALA-JOEYS campaign and improving our understanding of biogenic emissions in southeast Australia, and Shyno Susan Johnwill focus on variability of carbon monoxide in Australia from satellite and ground-based measurements.
  • The new Mercury Australia network was launched at ANU on 28 March 2019. The network brings together 20 researchers from eight universities across Australia, including CAC researcher Jenny Fisher, who are investigating the historical and contemporary uses and impacts of mercury. The network will engage with government, industry, and the public to provide high quality, independent data and information that can be translated to practical policy advice.
  • The 4-yearly scientific assessment of the impact of Ozone Depleting Substances has just been published both by the UN and in the scientific literature (Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences). The review of the impact on Air Quality was led by CAC member Stephen Wilson. The University of Wollongong played a large role in this report overall, as in addition to this lead authorship Sharon Robinson (biology) was co-author of two other assessments. No other university is represented so heavily.
  • CAC researcher Voltaire Velazco attended the CAMP2Ex (Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment) science team meeting in Pasadena, California ahead of the CAMP2Ex aircraft experiment taking place in Southeast Asia in August. Voltaire's role involves getting flights over the TCCON site at Burgos, and complementing the campaign's science objectives with ground-based FTIR and LIDAR measurements.
  • The Aurora Australis is due to set sail for the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island on 5 March, with CAC director Clare Murphy and CAC associate member Alan Griffiths on board. Very high seas are predicted for the transit. The atmospheric chemists will be busy onboard measuring a diverse array of trace gases and particulate parameters using the AIRBOX mobile laboratory, with the goal of better understanding the process of aerosol formation over the southern ocean. 

 

  • PhD student Neil Page attended the one-month European Research Course on Atmospheres (ERCA) held in Grenoble, France with participants and lecturers from all over the world. ERCA covers the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, the climate system and atmospheric pollution. The program also includes group projects; practicals using lidars, spectrometers and models; and a research visit to the Observatoire de Haute-Provence for astronomical observations. Neil followed ERCA with a research visit to collaborator Aurélien Dommergue at the Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement. 
  • Over the summer, CAC hosted three undergraduate researchers. Chris Nelson has been undertaking a SMAH Summer Scholar project with Nicholas Deutscher working on atmospheric AirCore profiling. Chris is a recent chemistry graduate from the University of Queensland. He has been joined in laboratory and field testing and sampling by Alex Carter, a 2nd/3rd year undergraduate chemistry intern. Chris and Alex have been developing the horizontal AirCore sampling technique to improve precision and reduce the effects of contamination. They have also been sampling in situ in the Wollongong area, exploring methane hotspots, as well as testing components for upcoming balloon-borne AirCore launches. Brittany Walker, who recently completed her 1st year in Atmospheric Science, has been working as an intern with Jenny Fisher, updating and modernising the software package used to benchmark the GEOS-Chem mercury model.
  • Members of CAC checked out the location of the new atmospheric platform on top of the Molecular Horizon’s building – agreeing the last details before the concrete floor was poured!

What's Cool Archives

What's Cool 2018

December 2018 - February 2019: Over the summer, CAC hosted three undergraduate researchers. Chris Nelson has been undertaking a SMAH Summer Scholar project with Nicholas Deutscher working on atmospheric AirCore profiling. Chris is a recent chemistry graduate from the University of Queensland. He has been joined in laboratory and field testing and sampling by Alex Carter, a 2nd/3rd year undergraduate chemistry intern. Chris and Alex have been developing the horizontal AirCore sampling technique to improve precision and reduce the effects of contamination. They have also been sampling in situ in the Wollongong area, exploring methane hotspots, as well as testing components for upcoming balloon-borne AirCore launches. Brittany Walker, who recently completed her 1st year in Atmospheric Science, has been working as an intern with Jenny Fisher, updating and modernising the software package used to benchmark the GEOS-Chem mercury model.

December 2018: CAC Director Clare Murphy was promoted to Professor and CAC researcher Nicholas Deutscher was promoted to Senior Research Fellow.

December 2018: A new paper led by CAC researcher Jenny Fisher was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. The authors used 20 years of measurements collected from aircraft, combined with a chemical transport model, to determine the abundance and impacts of small alkyl nitrates. These are nitrogen-containing compounds that break down slowly and so stay in the atmosphere long enough to be transported to otherwise pollution‐free remote ocean regions. This research was conducted using the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) national supercomputer Raijin, and was profiled in an NCI Research Highlight.

October 2018: CAC research assistant and former Honours student Jack Simmons graduated and was featured in a UOW press release about his Antarctic research trip.

October 2018: CAC director Clare Murphy gave a talk on experiences with scientific fieldwork at the University of Wollongong’s TEDx event.

October 2018: The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite-2 "IBUKI-2" (GOSAT-2) was successfully launched by the H-IIA rocket from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center on October 29, 2018. CAC members look forward to years of providing ground-truthing data for GOSAT-2 as well as to using its latest atmospheric products.

October 2018: A study on measurements of some nitrogen oxides in Melbourne air has just been published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The research was the result of a collaboration between members of the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry (Stephen Wilson and Nicholas Jones), the University of Melbourne, the Bureau of Meteorology and the University of Heidelberg. The surprising finding was that at a site that is not very polluted by world standards there was a large source of HONO during the day. During some days this represented the dominant source of the hydroxyl radical, the major atmospheric cleansing agent of the atmosphere.

September 2018: Several CAC researchers and PhD students attended the 15th International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Science Conference, which was held jointly with the 14th international Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP) Quadrennial Symposium in Takamatsu, Japan. Included in the photo is Melita Keywood (CSIRO), who is also the new president of the international Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution.

September 2018: CAC Director and IGAC Steering Committee Member Clare Murphy was also in attendance at the pre-conference scientific meetings and met the staff from the journal Atmosphere at their conference booth.

August 2018: CAC researcher Nicholas Deutscher was  to work on measuring greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and understanding what causes their variability. His project, Novel techniques for interpreting atmospheric variability and its drivers, will make extensive use of the AirCore measurement technique in and existing measurements made by CAC, combined with atmospheric modelling, to improve greenhouse gas emissions estimates and understand how these are likely to evolve in a changing climate.

July 2018: CAC PhD student Beata Bukosa represented the School of Chemistry at the faculty round of the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. As the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health Judge's Winner, she was chosen to represent the faculty at the final round of UOW's 3MT competition with the other faculty round winners. Her talk title was Missing pieces: Imitating our Earth system, and she talked about the importance of greenhouse gas measurements and modelling in Australia.

July 2018: CAC Director Clare Murphy has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief for "Air Quality" for the journal Atmosphere.

June 2018: Celia Lavigne, a visiting intern student from France, has joined CAC for the next 4 months to work with the new BAASS.

June 2018: CAC has just taken possession of a major new instrument for atmospheric composition measurements funded by a UOW Major Equipment Grant and the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub! The Biogenic Ambient Atmospheric Sampling System (BAASS) comprises a Markes pre-concentration/injection system and an Agilent Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometer. It is currently deployed at ANSTO at Lucas Heights and is undergoing initial testing to enable measurements of the chemicals emitted by trees (biogenic volatile organic compounds or VOCs). There is growing recognition of the importance of these biogenic emissions on atmospheric chemistry and air quality within urban air-sheds (especially in cities surrounded by densely forested regions). Within Australia, many of the major cities have very high levels of atmospheric VOCs that are predominantly emitted by vegetation within the cities and emissions originating from nearby natural forested regions. These chemicals react in the atmosphere leading to increased concentrations of fine particulates and ozone, causing poor air quality and adverse health impacts.

June 2018: Alan Griffiths from ANSTO has just joined the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry as an honorary fellow. Alan completed his undergraduate work in physics and oceanography in Tasmania, then moved to ANU to complete a PhD studying scramjets. This atmospheric theme has since taken over his professional career, as he now studies the use of stable and radioactive elements to trace atmospheric motion ? and has already been involved with members of CAC studying the release of greenhouse gases from farmland using radon as a tracer. This interest will overlap with work on air quality within the research group.

June 2018: A new paper on aerosol particle distributions led by CAC PhD student Doreena Dominick was published in Atmospheric Environment. The study found that particle number concentrations measured during the aerosol measurements period of the MUMBA campaign were influenced by marine and urban air. Overall, distinct sources of particle number were identified which were traffic emissions, industrial activities and marine aerosol. Biogenic sources influenced secondary organic aerosols formation. Particle number concentrations were also strongly influenced by sea breezes that carry particles from sources in and around Sydney (north easterly winds) as well as Port Kembla Steel Works and the urban areas (winds from the south). Other CAC co-authors include Stephen Wilson, Clare Paton-Walsh, and Elise-Andree Guerette.

May 2018: A new paper on PM2.5 emissions from tropical peat fires in Malaysia led by CAC researchers Chris Roulston, Clare Paton-Walsh (Murphy) and Elise-Andree Guerette has just been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research ? Atmospheres. The study found unexpectedly large emissions of fine particulates that contribute to ?haze? events of extreme pollution in southeast Asia. Interestingly the study also discovered a previously unidentified phenomenon that causes the emissions to drop rapidly as the ash layer is formed above the burning peat.

April 2018: The Burgos TCCON station is now a satellite validation ?super site?. With the addition of another NIES-Japan instrument, the TCCON station in Burgos, Philippines joins SKYNET and can now be designated as a satellite validation ?super site?. CAC researcher Voltaire A. Velazco coordinated with 25 different teams over the last six months to take part in the EMeRGe mission, led by University of Bremen. Voltaire thanks NIES for funding this participation. EMeRGe successfully concludes, providing Burgos TCCON the needed validation profiles to make it into a ?full? TCCON site. We sincerely thank the EMerGe team for this.

April 2018: The TCCON Philippines project (Velazco et al., 2017) was the feature story in the annual sustainability report of the First Philippine Holdings (FPH). The project is a testament to FPH?s commitment to environmental sustainability by supporting climate-related research projects that have a global impact, such as the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON).

April 2018: A new paper on isoprene emissions in the Southeast US, co-authored by CAC researcher Jenny Fisher and led by collaborators at Harvard University, has just been published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The authors used satellite formaldehyde measurements, combined with a high-resolution inverse model, to show that model isoprene emissions are up to three times too high over parts of the Southeast US, with impacts on simulation of ozone and aerosols.

April 2018: Dr. Scott Chambers has just joined the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry as an Honorary Fellow. Scott has a background in studying atmospheric transport of pollutants, starting from in situ measurements involving towers and aircraft around Australia and now involves the operation of a number of long-term measurement sites globally as part of his role at ANSTO. His interest in using radon to study the build-up of key atmospheric pollutants overnight in cities through to hemispheric transport processes overlaps closely with a range of current research activities within CAC.

March 2018: Alex Guenther and Saewung Kim visited from University of California-Irvine to discuss the planned COALA campaign and visit potential sites. They made visits to the Crommelin Biological Research Station and Cataract Scout Park (visiting the AIRBOX on location).

March 2018: AIRBOX was deployed to Cataract Scout Park in order to gather some indicative data of the atmospheric influences to assess the location as a possible atmospheric chemistry super site in the planned COALA campaign.

March 2018: A paper led by CAC member Elise-Andree Guerette was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. This paper describes measurements of trace gases made at prescribed fires in temperate forests in Australia. The work highlights the fact that smoke from temperate forest fires has a different composition to the smoke from fires in other Australian ecosystems and to fires in temperate forests on other continents. These findings are important for those forecasting poor air quality episodes in Australia.

March 2018: A new paper led by CAC member David Griffith was published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. This paper describes the development and application of open path FTIR monitoring of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane) in the near infrared spectrum over a 1.5 km open path in urban Heidelberg, Germany. The technique allows spatial averaging of trace gas measurements that avoid local effects and better match fine-scale models of atmospheric composition. The work was carried out at the Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Heidelberg, as a sabbatical leave project by David Griffith in 2014.

March 2018: Two Cardiff undergraduate students have been working within CAC for the last 8 months measuring volatile organic compounds in the Australian bush. Emilia Bushrod and Emily Portergill are just finishing measurements looking at how natural emissions from the Australian forests around Sydney vary with space and time. As chemistry students, this has been a big change from the white coats and fumehoods that they have used before.

March 2018: Ian Galbally, an Honorary Professorial Fellow in CAC, has published a new paper in Atmospheric Environment titled "Uncertainties in models of tropospheric ozone based on Monte Carlo analysis: Tropospheric ozone burdens, atmospheric lifetimes and surface distributions."

March 2018: Dr Alastair Williams has just joined the Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry as an Honorary Fellow. Alastair is the leader of the atmospheric research group within the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and has a significant background in meteorology and radon. The group at ANSTO studies radon concentrations at sites around the globe and uses these to study the atmospheric transport of pollutants. We already have had a close association with Alastair through the joint supervision of honours students and through work at the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station in Tasmania. This appointment should strengthen the collaboration between our groups.

March 2018: CAC director Clare Murphy was interviewed for a Sydney Morning Herald article on the causes of stratospheric ozone depletion and extreme UV levels in Australia.

February 2018: Dr Ann Stavert has just joined the Centre of Atmospheric Chemistry at UOW as an honorary fellow. Following completion of a PhD at UOW in 2012, Ann has worked at CSIRO (Oceans and Atmosphere), where she is currently based, and at the University of Bristol, UK. She has focussed on greenhouse gas measurements, managing sites from Antarctica to tall towers in the UK, and has a strong background in data analysis. Her interests strongly overlap with the work at CAC and this appointment should strengthen research both at UOW and CSIRO.

February 2018: The Laser Chemistry Lab welcomes new PhD students Paddy Kelly, Benjamin McKinnon and Sam Marlton and new Honours students Boris Ucur and Brett Burns. CAC also welcomes new Honours student Kate Sneesby.

February 2018: CAC student Neil Page is currently aboard the Aurora Australis, making research measurements during the re-supply voyages that equip the Antarctic stations. In his spare time, he is also keeping a blog about his experiences on the voyage.

February 2018: CAC researcher Jenny Fisher and collaborator Kathryn Emmerson from CSIRO published a new article in The Conversation: Common products, like perfume, paint and printer ink, are polluting the atmosphere.

February 2018: CAC researcher Jenny Fisher convened a session on Atmospheric and Oceanic Chemistry at the International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography in Sydney, where she also gave an oral presentation on biogenic emissions and chemistry in southeast Australia.

February 2018: CAC hosted Dr Christine Wiedinmyer, the Associate Director for Science at NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Christine worked collaboratively with CAC researchers and PhD students, met with bushfire researchers, gave a faculty seminar on "Fires, fires everywhere!" and presented an invited talk at the International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography in Sydney. Her visit was funded by a UOW Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health Visiting Research Leaders grant.

February 2018: CAC researcher Stephen Wilson was interviewed for an ABC News article on a new studying showing stratospheric ozone is not recovering outside the Antarctic region, potentially due to the warming climate.

December 2017 - January 2018: Over summer, CAC welcomed 3 summer scholars to the research group for exciting summer projects. Celia Chen from the University of Sydney and Merrilyn McKee from Monash University worked with Nicholas Deutscher on testing and applying AirCore measurements to horizontal profiles. During their projects they were able to improve the sampling technique and verify against other measurements, as well as discovering some interesting greenhouse gas signals around the Wollongong area. Emma Nguyen from the University of Wollongong worked with Jenny Fisher on identifying relationships between poor air quality and drought severity across Australia.

January 2018: Laser chemistry lab student James Bezzina published a new paper that reports intriguing chemistry of the protonated uracil radical ion oxidation ? results now online in JPCA.

January 2018: CAC hosted Dr Louisa Emmons, a senior scientist at NCAR in the U.S., and Dr Kathryn Emmerson, a senior research scientist at CSIRO, to work on planning the COALA (Characterizing Organics and Aerosol Loading over Australia) atmospheric chemistry campaign, proposed to be held in southeast Australia in summer 2020.

What's Cool 2017

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.

December 2017: CAC masters student Neil Page won 3rd place in the American Geophysical Union's 2017 Fall Virtual Poster Showcase. Neil's presentation, Using observations and modelling to quantify mercury biogeochemical cycling in the Australian context, highlighted results from his recently submitted masters thesis. Congratulations Neil!

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.

November 2017: CAC members Jenny Fisher and Stephen Wilson published an "Explainer" in The Conversation: Hydrofluorocarbons saved the ozone layer, so why are we banning them?

October 2017: CAC researchers David Griffith and Voltaire Velazco co-authored an article published in Nature Scientific Reports. The authors used satellite and ground-based data to determine how much carbon was released to the atmosphere during the large 2015-2016 El Nino event. The article also featured in a press release from the Max Planck Institute.

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.

October 2017: A new paper co-authored by CAC member Jenny Fisher and led by collaborators at Macquarie University was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper presents the first two years of measurements of atmospheric mercury at the Australian Tropical Atmospheric Research Station in northern Australia. The results were also the topic of an article in The Conversation: Mercury from the northern hemisphere is ending up in Australia.

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.

September 2017: CAC member Jenny Fisher visited windy Wellington to present a seminar on atmospheric nitrogen chemistry at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

September 2017: A new paper led by CAC PhD student Jesse Greenslade was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper, titled "Stratospheric ozone intrusion events and their impacts on tropospheric ozone in the Southern Hemisphere" uses a combination of balloon-borne ozonesonde measurements and a chemical transport model to identify and quantify events when ozone is transported from the stratosphere to the troposphere over the southern ocean.

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 Jenny Fisher took part in the first-ever Science-A-Thon, joining others worldwide who tweeted 12 photos over 12 hours showing a day-in-the-life of scientists of all varieties. The Science-A-Thon doubled as an outreach event and a fundraiser for the Earth Science Women's Network. Check out Jenny's photos & tweets!

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: Jenny Fisher spent two weeks as a Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA. During her visit, she spent time working with collaborators from NCAR's Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling group and presented a seminar on the Impacts of organic nitrates on the NOx budget.

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.

What's Cool 2016

December 2016 / January 2017: CAC has hosted a team of summer students, including UOW Summer Scholars Imogen Wadlow and Jenny Xu; research internship students Alex Kuhar, Lachlan Spicer and Kate Sneesby and Indigenous Research Internship student Stephanie Beaupark. These students have been studying high spatial and temporal variability of air quality in Sydney. 

December 2016: CAC PhD student Max Desservettaz attended the 2016 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting which took place in San Francisco, between the 12th and 16th of December, where he presented his poster ?Comparison of biomass burning inventories processed by global models with total column, surface and satellite data in Australia? and enjoyed discussions with scientists from NASA, NCAR and the University of Texas amongst others.

November 2016: CAC member Jenny Fisher and UOW climate scientist Helen McGregor published an article in The Conversation on the value of NASA's Earth Science research.

November 2016: CAC members celebrated the 40th Anniversary of the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station with a commemorative ceremony, a visit to the station, and three days of science at the Atmospheric Composition and Chemistry Observations and Modelling Conference. CAC academic Stephen Wilson, who was Officer in Charge at Cape Grim from 1988-1992, played an important role in the proceedings: leading part of the station visit and jointly cutting the celebratory cake during the ceremony.

November 2016: CAC Deputy Director Adam Trevitt visited China as part of the ATSE's YSEP China-Australia program. Seven Universities in 10 days: Beijing Normal, Peking, Beijing Int. Tech., Dalian Chemical Physics, USTC (NRSL), Shanghai Jiao Tong and Shanghai U. Amazing journey - so much exciting science.

November 2016: In the latest round of funding from the Australian Research Council, CAC Deputy Director Adam Trevitt and collaborators were awarded a Discovery Project on Formation, photochemistry and fate of gas-phase peroxyl radicals. CAC associate member Sandy Burden was awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award on Statistical tools for assessing effects of environmental change.

October 2016: CAC member Jenny Fisher received one of three 2016 L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science fellowships awarded in Australia. She will use the fellowship funding to improve the resolution of the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemical transport model over Australia.

October 2016: CAC members Clare Murphy and Travis Naylor hosted a CSIRO Scientists in Schools ASSETS Indigenous high school student for work experience. Grace Kalinin did an excellent job using low cost sensors to monitor PM2.5 levels around the M1 highway.

September 2016: CAC members Clare Murphy, Elise-Andree Guerette, Nicholas Jones, Maximilien Desservettaz and Doreena Dominick made scientific presentations at the 2016 International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) conference.

September 2016: CAC Director Clare Murphy was elected to the IGAC (International Global Atmospheric Chemistry) Scientific Steering Committee (to serve 2017-2019).

September 2016: CAC members Travis Naylor and Clare Murphy join the ground crew as AIRBOX gets delivered for its inaugural field campaign to Mission Beach, Queensland.

September 2016: CAC members Chris Roulston and Clare Murphy return from a successful field campaign to measure emissions from peat fires in Malaysia in collaboration with Tom Smith of Kings College London.

September 2016: Congratulations to current and former CAC PhD students Matthew Prendergast and Ruhi Humphries who jointly won the 2016 Larry & Marilyn Hick Award, which is awarded for ?the best research paper by a HDR student in the School of Chemistry at UOW?.

  • Ruhi?s paper: R. S. Humphries et al. Unexpectedly high ultrafine aerosol concentrations above East Antarctic sea ice, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 2185-2206 (2016).
  • Matthew?s paper: ?M. B. Prendergast et al. Formation and stability of gas-phase o-benzoquinone from oxidation of ortho-hydroxyphenyl: a combined neutral and distonic radical study, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 18, 4320-4332 (2016).

August 2016: In August CAC members David Griffith and Stephen Wilson with colleagues from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and Charles Sturt University set up a new field measurement site for greenhouse gas emissions on the CSU campus near Wagga Wagga, NSW. The project combines expertise in Radon measurement and micrometeorology at ANSTO with high precision trace gas measurements at UOW in a pilot experiment to measure regional scale emissions of nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide from an agricultural area. The project is funded by UOW- ANSTO Joint Collaborative Seed Project Grant Scheme.

August 2016: CAC and Laser Chemistry Lab Phd student Bart Vaughn?s paper on ?Drop-on-demand microdroplet generation: a very stable platform for single-droplet experimentation? is now online in RSC Advances. His paper reports the performance of drop-on-demand piezo-activated microdroplet generation investigated using microdroplet cavity enhanced fluorescence spectroscopy.

August 2016: CAC made an impressive showing at the Australia-New Zealand Aerosol Assembly with talks by CAC members Clare Murphy and Steve Wilson and PhD student Doreena Dominick. Also in attendance were postdoc Elise-Andree Guerette and honours student Tom Keatley, as well as our visitor and UGPN partner Prashant Kumar from the University of Surrey.

Prof Lidia Morawska (Queensland University of Technology), Dr Prashant Kumar (University of Surrey), and A/Prof Clare Murphy (University of Wollongong) at the Australia-New Zealand Aerosol Assembly.

July 2016: CAC member Jenny Fisher gave an invited presentation on atmospheric organic nitrates at the Telluride Science Research Center Workshop New Insights into Gas-Phase Atmospheric Chemistry, held in Telluride, Colorado USA. Travel costs were provided by travel grants from The Ian Potter Foundation and the UOW Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health.

July 2016: CAC PhD student Matthew Prendergast from the Laser Chemistry Lab was awarded a prize for an outstanding poster presentation by the RSC Gas Kinetics Group at the 24th International Symposium on Gas Kinetics and Related Phenomena (York, UK).

July 2016: CAC member Berywck Poad and collaborators have broken a world record by synthesising the strongest base ever made. Their work was profiled in an article in Chemistry World.

July 2016: CAC director Clare Murphy has been named as one of the new UOW Women of Impact. Clare was interviewed about her research by WIN TV News in a segment that aired the night of the Women of Impact launch. For more details, read about Clare's experiences .

June 2016: CAC member Jenny Fisher received the  from the University of Wollongong.

June 2016: CAC members Clare Murphy and Stephen Wilson and partners from the University of Surrey, University of Sao Paulo, and North Carolina State University, received a grant from the University Global Partnership Network for research into Next-Generation Environmental Sensing for Local to Global Scale Health Impact Assessment.

June 2016: CAC hosted a class of visiting HSC Chemistry students from Warrawong High School. Current students and recent graduates Max Desservettaz, Bea Bukosa, Joel Wilson, Kaitlyn Lieschke, and Cameron Bright talked to the students about their paths to research degrees and their current research. The students then visited the Laser Chemistry and Atmospheric Chemistry Labs to see science in action! More photos from the visit are available in the .

May 2016: A new article led by CAC member Jenny Fisher has just been published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The study uses aircraft and ground-based data to understand organic nitrates and their impact on the atmospheric NOx budget in an isoprene- and monoterpene-rich environment.

May 2016: CAC director Clare Murphy visited Dr Prashant Kumar at the University of Surrey to discuss plans for a quadrilateral UGPN project on air quality monitoring and modelling. The photo is in front of the wind tunnel facility at the University of Surrey that has been used for experiments to test the dispersion of pollutants in a built up area.

April 2016: CAC PhD student Max Desservettaz gave an oral presentation about new emission factors of trace gases and particulates from Australian savanna fires at the European Geoscience Union 2016 General Assembly (EGU2016) in front of a full room.

April 2016: A new article co-authored by CAC member Jenny Fisher has just been published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Led by Karen Yu (Harvard), the paper investigates the sensitivity of a chemical transport model to grid resolution when simulating chemistry under high-isoprene conditions.

Mar-Apr 2016: Recent CAC graduate Kaitlyn Lieschke travelled to the Southern Ocean on the RV Investigator as part of the CAPRICORN project measuring clouds, aerosols, precipitation, radiation and atmospheric composition over the Southern Ocean.

March 2016: CAC has a new paper, led by Travis Naylor, in Animal Production Science. This paper was 1 of 4 published as part of the national manure management program we were involved in for the last 3 years.

March 2016: CAC welcomed Iris Dion to the group. Iris has a masters degree from the University Pierre & Marie Curie, and will be spending the next few months working with Jenny Fisher and collaborators at Macquarie University to model the Australian mercury cycle. Iris' research assistantship is funded by CAC and a small grant from the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health.

March 2016: CAC member Jenny Fisher attended Science Meets Parliament 2016 as a representative of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society. Read more about the experience in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society.

February 2016: CAC members Frances Phillips and Travis Naylor attended the Greenhouse Gases in Animal Agriculture (GGAA) 2016 conference in Melbourne.

February 2016: A new paper involving CAC member Jenny Fisher led by collaborator Dr Eloise Marais at Harvard University was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The study used observations from the NASA SEAC4RS aircraft campaign in the Southeast US to evaluate a new mechanism for formation of organic aerosol from isoprene, and found that projected declines in SO2 emissions will doubly improve air quality by reducing both sulfate and organic aerosols.

February 2016: CAC comings and goings! Cameron Bright is starting his PhD studies in the Laser Chemistry Lab. Summer Scholar Matthew Rees finished a summer project on modelling tropospheric ozone and is returning to QUT in Brisbane to start an honours project funded by CSIRO. Laser Chemistry Lab PhD student Chris Hansen departs to U. Bristol to commence a postdoc -- good luck Chris!

February 2016: PhD student Matthew Prendergast?s hydroxyphenyl oxidation paper is highlighted as a cover in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2016,18, 4320-4332

February 2016: Our students have been busy presenting at conferences! James Bezzina and Cameron Bright (PhD students) presented their results at the Pacific Conference on Spectroscopy and Dynamics at Asilomar, California; Matthew Prendergast (PhD student) gave a talk at physchem2016 in Christchurch, NZ; and Kaitlyn Lieschke (Honours 2015) presented a poster at the AMOS National Conference 2016 in Melbourne.

February 2016: A perspective article on the reactivity of CN and CH radicals by Adam Trevitt and U W. Virginia collaborator Goulay is online in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.

Jan-Feb 2016: Recent CAC graduate Kaitlyn Lieschke completed an ARCCSS Summer Scholarship working at the University of Melbourne and CSIRO in Aspendale. The project involved assessing the ability of the CSIRO?s ACCESS model to simulate the ozone that develops over Antarctica in spring.

January 2016: CAC researchers are beginning 2016 by embarking on a round of new projects after a successful 2015 funding round. In addition to a 5-year Discovery Project (see below), CAC earned the following internal grants for 2016: A Deployable System for Automated Measurements of Greenhouse Gas Total Columns in Remote Environments (Voltaire Velazco, David Griffith); A system for spatially-resolved sampling of atmospheric Volatile Organic Compounds (Nicholas Deutscher, Stephen Wilson); Enabling A Step Change In Mercury Modelling Capabilities In Australia (Jenny Fisher); Southeast Asian TCCON Operations in Preparation for GOSAT-2 Satellite (Voltaire Velazco, David Griffith).