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Press Releases Tracking air Pollution by sea Michelle Firmbach Portsmouth Herald 7/30/02 PORTSMOUTH - If the Seacoast's air quality has become so unpredictable that a jog around New Castle or a bike ride to Odiorne State Park first requires a check of ground-level ozone, science may be able to help. It won't be long before New Hampshire residents will be able to get an air-quality forecast on the hour just like a weather report. "You will be able to see pollution moving toward you," said Robert Talbot, director of the AIRMAP Cooperative Institute and professor of earth science at the University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space. AIRMAP is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atmospheric Investigation, Regional Modeling, Analysis and Prediction project, headquartered at UNH.
Research under way aboard the vessel is expected to promote the development of national air-quality forecast capabilities. Chief scientist Timothy S. Bates, of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said the testing will increase the frequency and reliability of forecasts and, in the long term, help to pass legislation to improve air quality. "If we understand the system sufficiently, we can start to say 'OK, what if we turn off this emission?'" Bates explained. "How is that going to affect the big picture?" Thirty scientists, including personnel from both NOAA and UNH, steamed out into New Hampshire's coastal waters Monday to study the movement of airborne pollutants and which meteorological conditions contribute to the region's poor air quality. "This is the first try to get a handle on what's going on in this region," Talbot said. The region is the test bed for the AIRMAP project. Executed from a mobile platform, the project involves more than 100 NOAA personnel and 20 partner institutions. This summer marks the 2002 campaign of the New England air-quality study. For a short presentation Monday alongside the ship docked at the state pier, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., joined UNH President Ann Weaver, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere James Mahoney and others. "The air-quality projects will begin to address a growing concern in New Hampshire," Gregg said. "Air pollution migrating from Boston, New York and the Midwest and as far away as the Far East is creating an adverse situation not only in our urban areas, but in the White Mountains, North Country and the Seacoast." This year, Gregg included $12 million in federal funding for the region's air quality studies in the Senate appropriations bill now making itsway through the Senate. The bill includes $1.75 million for the AIRMAP study, an additional $6 million for the development of air quality and improved temperature forecasting, with the Northeast serving as the test site, and $5 million for an air-monitoring institute to be housed at UNH. Gregg said these programs will detail specific contaminants entering New Hampshire - where they're coming from and what can be done to reverse the trend. "We will know fairly precisely, once we complete the AIRMAP and atmospheric testing, first what the pollutants are and where they're coming from," Gregg said. "Once we know that we can take action to reduce the emissions and improve the quality of the air, there will be tangible results." For the past three years, AIRMAP has taken pollutant measurements from monitoring stations at three rural New Hampshire sites. The research ship and a G-1 Gulfstream aircraft operated by the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will be used as additional monitoring sites, offering the advantage of mobile platforms. On board the ship, 25-year-old UNH graduate student Marcy Vozzella was tracking nitric acid in the atmosphere in hopes of identifying sources of the pollution. "In Boston Harbor, we can watch the traffic peak, youcan see it in the air," said Vozzella, of Eliot, Maine. Samples taken by Vozzella, doctoral student Eric Scheuer, and lab supervisor Sallie Whitlow have little value on their own. But when pieced together with other data compiled on board, scientists can begin to gain a sense of atmospheric health. "The real heart of what's going on here is to see how well we can predict how things work. Back on land, we have computer modelers, which are making predictions and forecasts," Scheuer said. "We're out here trying to not only verify them, but see what they're missing and see how well we can do it. It's a lot of fun." The study is visible: Instrumentation and experimentation stations are being set up throughout the Seacoast region, the 274-foot Ronald H. Brown can be seen just off the coast, and the research plane may be apparent overhead. Also, NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory set up a Doppler LIDAR - short for "light detection and ranging" - at Rye Harbor State Park for sea-breeze observations. The equipment trailer will be seen on Route 1A in Rye. Seven integrated wind-profiler systems will be deployed at various sites in New York and around New England. These systems, which measure wind and temperature, will help document the movement of pollution into and out of the Northeast. |
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