The College of Engineering and the Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources present

Dr. Daniel Jaffe

University of Washington at Bothell

candidate for the

Cline Distinguished Chair in Engineering, Environment, and Natural Resources

Monday, March 7, 2005

9:00 am, Engineering Building Room 6085A

Made in China: Global Influences on Local Air Quality

In 1997, we proposed that we should be able to detect pollutants transported to North America from Asia.  Since then my research team has made numerous ground and airborne measurements of CO, O3, aerosols, nitrogen oxides, mercury and other compounds to evaluate this hypothesis and understand the quality of the background air arriving to North America.  One of the key findings is that we can identify gases and aerosols associated with a variety of sources on the Asian continent, including industrial emissions, mineral dust and emissions from biomass/biofuel combustion.  While these pollutants can be identified at ground level, from our airborne observations using the Wyoming King Air and a Beechcraft Duchess 76, we know that transport in the free troposphere is more common and more efficient.  In a few cases, we have identified substantial contributions from Asian pollutants at surface sites around the U.S.  In this talk I will present an overview of some of our key results, describe some of the key remaining scientific and policy questions and describe future directions for this research.