Conference on a Pilot Study Design for Air Quality in Africa

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports conferences in areas of science and engineering that bring experts together to discuss recent research or education findings or to expose other researchers or students to new research and education techniques. NSF encourages the convening in the U.S. of international conferences. The University of Maryland College Park will organize a workshop to bring together experts from the U.S., Ethiopia, and Europe to develop a roadmap for future research to advance the fundamental understanding of the spread of pollutions in highly polluted emerging megacities in Africa, such as Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The conference will be held on June 11-13, 2020. Students and faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other Minority Serving Institutions will attend this workshop. Given the large uncertainties in emissions and the potential for atmospheric chemistry and boundary- spanning climate impacts that are region specific, a focused workshop to identify the science questions unique to African megacities is critical. Detailed air quality studies in Africa may reveal novel atmospheric chemistry processes that may not be common in highly sampled regions in the northern mid latitudes. This new information could have significant implications for improved chemical mechanisms for air quality models and could provide guidance for laboratory-scale process studies. The workshop will identify and report on the observational and modeling requirements for rigorous experimental design addressing the unique needs from an African megacity point of view. It will discuss what science goals can be accomplished from a short-term intensive measurement campaign and discuss requirements for a long-term data collection effort to quantify primary and secondary emissions that may assist air quality regulators in Africa.This workshop is co-funded by the Directorates of Geosciences and Education & Human Resources.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.