Remote sounding of air quality and greenhouse gases in arctic, urban environments and martian environments

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The overarching goal of my research is to provide a better understanding of the processes that determine atmospheric composition and drive atmospheric change, employing a variety of instruments and data analysis tools. This proposal describes an integrated research program that takes advantage of several new and exciting opportunities. It consists of three interconnected projects that employ infrared spectroscopic techniques. The first project involves Studies of Biomass Burning and Pollution Events using measurements made with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers deployed at two sites: the Toronto Atmospheric Observatory (TAO) at urban mid-latitudes and the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) at Eureka, Nunavut in the remote high Arctic. These data will be used to investigate variability and trends in tropospheric composition, and will be compared to the GEOS-Chem model to characterize the origin, evolution, and impact of biomass burning and pollution events and to improve model emission inventories. The second project involves Studies of Greenhouse Gases in the context of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), which the PEARL FTIR spectrometer joined in June 2010. We will implement the network's data analysis protocol, defined by the extreme precision requirements for total column CO2. We will collaborate with other TCCON sites in using the data to study the carbon cycle, particularly the influence of regional fluxes and long-range transport on spatial and temporal gradients in CO2 and CH4. We will also provide valuable Arctic ground-truth measurements for Japan's GOSAT and NASA's OCO-2 missions. In August 2010, the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer (MATMOS) was selected for the 2016 NASA/ESA ExoMars mission. I am co-lead for the retrievals, which will be based upon TCCON techniques. The third project, studying the Chemical Composition of the Martian Atmosphere, will focus on development of MATMOS retrieval algorithms and their application to mapping global distributions of trace gases in the Martian atmosphere that can provide insight into geological and biogenic activity.