Active Research Projects
Air quality and climate change in Africa
With support from the National Science Foundation and the US State Department, we have started an air quality monitoring network in Kinshasa, DR Congo, a megacity with population over 11 million which suffers from poor air quality yet has no monitoring infrastructure. Other projects include air quality knowledge capacity building in Accra, Ghana (partner with Ghana EPA), sensor deployments in Nairobi, Kenya, Kampala, Uganda, and Lomé, Togo, and using models and remote sensing techniques in India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Regional climate response to changes in regional aerosol emissions
We are key members of the Regional Aerosol Model Intercomparison Project, or RAMIP as well as the Heterogeneous Climate Forcing project or HETCLIF. Some topics we have worked on in the past include: 1) The impact of changes in emissions in specific regions on local and remote climate, 2) Aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation and 3) The effect of absorbing aerosols on tropical monsoon systems.
News
Summer 2024: interns, rooftop monitoring site, and air monitoring on a ship!
We are having a very busy summer!
We welcomed two undergraduate research interns as part of the LDEO REU program. Andrea Belvis-Aquino, from University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, is working on use of optical particle counters to diagnose dust transport events in the Caribbean, with an emphasis on air quality impacts in Puerto Rico. Sophia Roberts, from Barnard College, joins the group to work on air quality exposure racial and social disparities in New York City.
Mr. Tedy Mutisya visit to Westervelt Aerosol Group!
Mr. Tedy Mwendwa Mutisya joins us for 1.5 months for a short research stay from his home university at Kenyatta University. Together with Dr. Godwin Opinde, who visited in May 2024, he is a key collaborator for our work in Kenya. During Tedy's stay he will be working on developing new air sensors in the lab and instrumenting our new rooftop monitoring site at LDEO.
Westervelt group at Air Sensors International Conference 2024
The Westervelt group has a major presence at Air Sensors International Conference 2024 meeting in Riverside, CA.
Our PI was a plenary keynote speaker on Thursday, on the topic "Key Research Challenges for Realizing the Benefit of Sensors". In this talk, he laid out a vision for emerging research use cases for sensors: satellite data fusion, source apportionment, and streamlined correction models. He also gave a tutorial presentation on day 1and two other presentations during the week.