Current Projects by Faculty

Modelling surface-atmosphere exchanges in urban areas: Development and evaluation of parameterizations and numerical models of varying degrees of sophistication to simulate heat and mass exchanges in urban areas and the resultant urban climate. This work has been undertaken collaboratively with Meteo-France, the UK Met Office, Environment Canada, and CSIRO Atmospheric Research Australia. Of interest is how to adequately capture and model the complexity of atmospheric processes in urban settings for operational weather forecast, air quality, and global climate models.

The urban water balance Development and evaluation of urban evapotranspiration and continuous urban water balance models for application into a spatially-distributed models of the urban water supply, stormwater and wastewater system. This work is being conducted locally, in Indiana, and in a collaborative project with CSIRO for the healthy cities initiative in Australia.

Improved models of particle dry deposition: Sponsored by National Science Foundation, this project is designed to provide improved theoretical understanding of particle fluxes and in particular causes of flux divergence and other non-ideal behavior and to develop improved numerical models of particle deposition to vegetated surfaces.

Modeling a PM climatology for the Fraser Valley: Sponsored by Environment Canada and the Clean Air Fund of the Fraser Valley, this project uses a numerical model to simulation particle composition in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, and specifically to quantify the role of heterogeneous chemistry in/on sea spray on gas and particle concentrations.

Ambient gaseous ammonia: Evaluation of continuous measurement methods suitable for routine deployment: Sponsored by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, this project inter-compares various methods for undertaking continuous high sensitivity measurements of ammonia at atmospheric levels.

Development and evaluation of downscaling techniques for wind climate: Sponsored by Nordic Energy Research (NEFP) and National Science Foundation (in review, this project develops and evaluates tools for providing high resolution projections of possible future wind climates. Initial results and downscaling methods are being considered for inclusion in the 4th AR of the IPCC.

Center for Excellence in Particle Research: BACCI: Biosphere-Aerosol-Cloud-Climate Interactions: Sponsored by Nordic Research Council, this project investigates all aspects of atmospheric particle processes and to quantify climate change impacts.

Estimating Recent Climatic Change and Its Impacts:

Continental- and hemispheric-scale changes in air-temperature probability distributions

Estimating the spatial scale of global-scale thermal anomalies

Simulation of spatial sampling problems in the global air-temperature record

Recent changes in persistence in daily air-temperature time series

Systematic changes and natural variations in growing-season conditions

Evaluating Environmental Change Using Spatial Analytical Methods:

Improved Geostatistical Methods for Evaluating Vegetation Dynamics

Scale, Boundary, and Pattern Problems in Forest Fragmentation Research

The Visualization of Climatic Change