School of Earth and Environment
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Sarah Monks Sarah Monks

Researcher / Postgraduate student

Telephone number: +44(0) 113 34 35612
Email address: S.A.Monks@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 10.126

TOMCAT

POLARCAT

Biography

Project details

Project title: Studying the impact of atmospheric transport of gas-phase pollution to the Arctic using a chemical transport model.

Supervisors: Dr Steve Arnold and Prof Martyn Chipperfield

Start date: November 2007

Funded by: EPSRC

Project Description:

Emissions of trace gases from the mid/low latitudes can be transported to the Arctic where they can influence the tropospheric composition. The rate of chemical reactions and deposition at these high latitudes are controlled by processes that are unique to the region due to the cold temperatures, stable boundary layer, seasonal variation of insolation and interactions with the snow/ice-covered surface. Surface temperatures in the Arctic have increased more than in any other region over the past few decades, a better understanding of the processes governing this warming, including the role of short-lived greenhouse gases, is therefore urgently required. During summer 2008, the POLARCAT campaign aimed to collect an extensive gas-phase and aerosol dataset within the Arctic troposphere, which will aid the evaluation of our understanding of oxidant photochemistry and aerosol processing in the region.

Previous comparisons of global chemical transport models have shown that they exhibit a large variability in their Arctic chemical budgets, indicating that the processes controlling Arctic tropospheric composition are not well understood or represented within models. A 3D chemical transport model, TOMCAT, is being used in conjunction with satellite data, surface station data and new trace-gas observations from aircraft during the POLARCAT 2008 campaign. The aim of my work is to evaluate the ability of a global chemical transport model, TOMCAT, to simulate the transport of pollutants to the Arctic, with particular focus on the sensitivity of the model to the treatment of biomass burning emissions.

Biography:

  • BSc Mathematics with Management, University of Liverpool.

  • MRes Physics of the Earth and Amosphere, University of Leeds.

  • PhD Atmospheric transport of gas-phase pollution to the Arctic using a chemical transport model.

Publications