I am a research scientist in the Science Directorate at the NASA Langley Research Center.
My work at NASA involves three-dimensional modeling and data analysis studies of the Earth's atmosphere, with particular focus on understanding the impact of dynamics and long-range transport on atmospheric composition and air quality.
As part of my research, I'm attached to Daniel Jacob's group at Harvard University. where I'm working towards a PhD in atmospheric sciences. Recently, I have been working the global disperal of mineral dust in the Earth's atmosphere using the GEOS-Chem model. I've been focussed on the impact of transpacific transport of mineral dust on aerosol concentration in the United States, see Fairlie et al. [2006].
In addition, I've been working with Jim Szykman (US EPA), my NASA colleague Brad Pierce, and colleagues at EPA and UMBC, on an EPA Advanced Monitoring Initiative (AMI) project to assess background levels of sulfate aerosol at east coast monitoring sites, specifically Baltimore, MD. We want to know how much regional transport contributes to sulfate concentrations at Baltimore, compared with local sources, and we want to be able to monitor anticipated reductions in the regional transport contributions due to source reductions under the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). To do this, I have been computing air parcel back trajectories from the Baltimore site and sampling chemical and meteorological characteristics along the trajectories from the Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ). The results are compared with ground-based, and satellite observations. These calculations help us attribute sources, and provide information on chemical transformation along the trajectory paths.
Another project I've been working on recently, is to diagnose dynamical processes responsible for the development of fine-scale structure observed in the upper troposphere in the vicinity of the subtropical jetstream. Slender layers or filamentary structures, and other small-scale structures, provide clues to the processes that created them, processes associated with exchange of air across the tropopause, and possible irreversible mixing of air with different origins and chemical characteristics, e.g. stratospheric air and polluted air oroginating in the boundary layer. To do this, I've been working with my NASA colleague, Melody Avery, using insitu observations from the NASA DC8 aircraft, results from the Realtime Air Quality Modeling System (RAQMS) model, and trajectory calculations,{Fairlie et al., 2007, submitted to J. Geophys. Res., INTEX-A special issue).
I have been very fortunate in my career to be involved in a number of airborne measurement field campaigns. These have been focussed on unserstanding polar ozone depletion: the 1994 Airborne Southern Hemisphere Ozone Experiment (ASHOE); the 1997 Polar Ozone Loss over the Arctic Region in Summer (POLARIS) mission; the 1999/2000 SAGE III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment (SOLVE); and continental outflow and intercontinental transport of pollution: the 2001 Transport and Chemical evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P) campaign, and the more recent INTEX-A and INTEX-B campaigns.
If you're interested, you can view my resume or list of publications.