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Earth&Planetarytimes WINTER 2010 TIMES EarthHARVARD UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT&Planetary OF EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES Arctic haze over the North Slope, Brooks Range, Alaska. Arctic Haze is a winter- and spring-time build-up of anthropogenic atmospheric Combining chemistry, pollution in the Arctic atmosphere that biology, oceanography & can persist for weeks. 5geology EPS’s first tenured female faculty member Ann PHOTOGRAPH BY CAMERON S. MCNAUGHTON Pearson studies biological Analyzing Pollution in the signatures Arctic Atmosphere GEOS-Chem model helps quantify atmospheric composition BY JENNY FISHER, FOURTH-YEAR GRADUATE STUDENT Department field trips or centuries, the remote, sparsely- has been a problem of long-standing interest to provide a real life version of 6textbooks topics populated Arctic has been considered the scientific community. While some pollutants one of the most pristine and unpol- are undoubtedly local (such as the oil fields of luted environments on Earth. Yet Alaska and the copper smelters of Russia), the despite its distance from the world’s scale of the pollution influence points to emis- major population centers, the region is adversely sions transported from much larger sources in affected by a by-product of human activity: air the industrialized countries of the northern mid- pollution. Large amounts of soot, ozone, mercury, latitudes. Early studies in the 1970s and 1980s Fand other pollutants accumulate over the pole blamed industrial activity in Europe and the Let the games begin: every winter and spring, when constant darkness former USSR. Over the past 20 years, however, 10EPS vs. Physics and cold temperatures slow the atmosphere’s the global distribution of pollutants has changed natural removal processes. The resultant hazy dramatically, and more recent studies disagree as Arctic skies have far-reaching implications for air to which sources are responsible for the pollu- quality, atmospheric chemistry, polar ecology, and tion. global climate. A variety of data are available to study the Quantifying the sources of Arctic pollution Arctic atmosphere, CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 Kissing salmon and other 13news from our alumni Visit us online at www.eps.harvard.edu FROM THE CHAIR JOHN H. SHAW aWelcome newsletter dedicated to the to inauguralstrengthening theissue community of Earth of scholars, & Planetary students, staff, Times and alumni, of Harvard University’s Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS) Department. You might ask why we initiated this effort in such trying financial times. Most of Harvard’s press coverage these past months has focused on endowment losses. Our fine University, however, seems to be making a strong recovery, and the most important activities in EPS—improving our undergraduate and graduate programs, supporting our talented staff, growing our faculty, and pursu- ing inspired research—haven’t missed a beat. Our newsletter is inspired by a desire to share these rewarding activities with you, and in the process to help build a stronger EPS commu- nity. As you will see in the articles and photographs that cover these pages, the past year has been one of great progress. We welcomed two new senior faculty members—Jerry X. Mitrovi- N ca and Ann Pearson—and two new assistant professors— RSO E TT Francis Macdonald and David Johnston. Ann was promoted E P N from within, and represents the first female senior faculty member in Earth sciences over the long history of our Univer- sity. Moreover, our faculty and scholars continue to pursue an ever-expanding range of research—seeking to understand the PHOTOGRAPH BY RYA Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, the workings of its inner core, Stop one, day three. mantle and crust, examining the origins of life, and exploring other planets. This diversity of interest After climbing a little over reflects our charge as an “Earth and Planetary” department, one that is keenly interested in main- 2,000 feet from lake level, the taining strength in geology while embracing other disciplines that are revolutionizing our field. undergraduate field trip troupe, led by John Shaw (center, back row in red polo shirt), poses for Much of this research aims to directly benefit our society—by addressing issues of climate change, a group photo at the McConnell pollution, energy, resources, and hazards. These topics serve as the greatest selling points for our Thrust at Mt. Yamnuska. To see undergraduate concentration, which has more than doubled in size over the past six years. To benefit more photos visit http://structure. harvard.edu/RockiesPix2009. these students, as well as those in our vibrant graduate program, we have worked hard to revise our curriculum and promote educational opportunities beyond the classroom. Recent student trips to Iceland, Hawaii, and the Canadian Rockies help broaden the horizons of our students, while building relationships that will hopefully extend beyond their time at Harvard. It is precisely these relation- ships that we hope to foster with you through this newsletter. So please read ahead, reminisce a bit, and enjoy. Also, please contact us if you would like to share your thoughts and stories with our com- munity through future editions of Earth & Planetary Times. Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural & Economic Geology | Harvard College Professor CONTENTS Table of winter 2010 • volume 1 • issue 1 EACH ISSUE FEATURES 11 Around the Department 4 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geophysicist 11 Table Talk 5 Into the Mud with Ann Pearson 12 Alumni Notes 6 Field (Trips) of Dreams 16 EPS Connections 8 Meet the New Guys 16 Stump the Scholar 9 Promotions 9 Seismic Observatory Renamed to Honor Adam Dziewonski 10 Ultimately, EPS Wins Hearts not Frisbee 2 WINTER 2010 show that CO in the GEOS-Chem model is consistently lower than observations, indicating that our state-of-the-science estimates of CO emissions from fossil fuel burning are underestimated, particularly over Europe and Asia. With improved estimates of CO emis- sions, we used the model to quantify the sources affecting Arctic pollution during spring 2008. Figure 1 shows the impact of fossil fuel burning in three regions (North America, Europe, and Asia) on CO pollu- tion in the Arctic. Asian pollution is clearly dominant at all altitudes, although European pollution has some influence near the sur- face. In contrast, North American pollution has virtually no impact on the Arctic. Satellite observations offer a longer-term perspective, providing context for the 2008 R E results. Data from NASA’s Atmospheric SH I F InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) satellite instru- Y ment show that CO over Alaska in April F JENN O 2008 was lower than average. We have found SY E that AIRS observations of CO over Alaska RT U CO are strongly correlated with the Ocean Niño Index, a measure of the strength of El Niño. HART C Meteorological changes associated with El Figure 1. Mean CO concentrations in different altitude bands for emissions from different regions as simu- Niño enhance transport of Asian pollution lated by the GEOS-Chem model. to Alaska, while conditions associated with La Niña reduce this transport. This result suggests that the impact of Asian pollution on the Arctic, already dominant, could be “Plumes of pollution aren’t impossible to track if you know even greater during a strong El Niño event. Our work thus far has provided impor- how to look for them.” ~Jenny Fisher tant constraints to understanding Arctic pollution—namely, the underestimation of fossil fuel sources, the dominance of Asian CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 each with distinct to provide quantitative constraints on the emissions and the importance of El Niño— advantages and disadvantages. Surface- sources of Arctic pollution. but the picture is far from complete. While based measurements provide long-term Plumes of pollution aren’t impossible to CO serves as a good indicator of overall records but are limited to a few sites and to track if you know how to look for them. We pollution, other environmentally-important the lowest levels of the atmosphere. Air- use carbon monoxide (CO) as an indica- species are affected by different source distri- craft campaigns provide enhanced vertical tor of atmospheric pollution. CO is emit- butions and atmospheric processes. Current coverage but occur infrequently (every 5-10 ted by incomplete combustion—fossil fuel research in our group is expanding on this years) and cover a limited spatial region. and biomass burning—and stays in the work to better understand the sources and Satellites provide daily coverage of the polar atmosphere for several months. This is long impacts of a variety of Arctic contaminants, region but the data are difficult to interpret enough for a plume of CO to be tracked including environmental toxins like mercury and have yet to be tested in the Arctic. from a mid-latitude source to the Arctic but and climate-forcing pollutants like ozone, Individually these data provide only sparse short enough that it doesn’t get mixed into soot, and sulfate. snapshots of the polar region, but combined the background. Perhaps most importantly, they form a more comprehensive picture. CO is one of only a few pollutants that is Jenny’s interest in air Unfortunately, they can’t be compared measurable from space. pollution developed directly due to differences in resolution, Last April, as part of the 4th International while she was living in sampling location, and sampling frequency. Polar Year, NASA and NOAA sponsored Pasadena, CA, where In the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling extensive aircraft campaigns, covering a pollution haze was Group, we use a global three-dimensional swath from Alaska to Greenland to the N often thick enough to RSO chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) North Pole and providing enough CO E completely block the ETT to combine the complementary information observations to perform a comparison with N P nearby San Gabriel ya available in these different datasets in order the CO modeled by GEOS-Chem.
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