Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted into Earth’s atmosphere from ecosystems, wildfires, and human activity drive secondary pollutant formation, affect global biogeochemical cycling, and alter the atmosphere’s oxidizing capacity. Quantifying these effects lies at the heart of our ability to model air pollution and predict environmental change. In this seminar I will discuss my group’s work combining space-based data, in-situ observations, and modeling to better understand the emissions and chemistry of atmospheric VOCs. I will focus on our work developing new space-borne VOC measurements based on radiance observations from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), and show how these data can be used to map key emissions and to track the atmosphere’s oxidizing capacity through time. Finally, I will discuss the current outlook for low-Earth and geostationary observations of atmospheric composition, concluding with some outstanding science questions and needs for future work.
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