CAPITA Projects 2001-2008

NSF Tools Collaboration Tools for Virtual Workgroups

EPA WebVis Internet Visibility System

NOAA ASOS Data Evaluation

EPA ICAP Intercontinental Transport of Air Pollutants

RPO CATT Combined Aerosol Transport Tool

RPO FASTNet Fast Aerosol Sensing Tools for Natural Event Tracking

NASA SAPMan Satellite Application to PM Management

NSF – Collaboration Tools

Monitoring and Analysis of Large-Scale Aerosol Events:

ITR on Collaboration in Virtual Workgroups

This is a proposal to develop and apply new information technologies to enhance the effectiveness of web-based ad-hoc virtual workgroups (VWG) such as those interested in global/regional-scale aerosol events (forest fires, dust storms, air pollution transport episodes). Such atmospheric events are unpredictable in space, time and magnitude and their study requires rapid and open communication, cooperation and coordination. The main challenge is to identify, adopt and harness these Internet innovations in manner that is acceptable to the diverse disciplinary (domain) science community.

Goals of the Project

• Enhance the web-technologies that support virtual workgroups.

• Develop a new tool for the integration and browsing atmospheric data.

• Apply these to support virtual workgroups on global-scale aerosol events.

Functionally, the proposed web IT system is to support the workgroup activities:

• Communication. Workgroup interaction through the web and e-mail

• Cooperation. Sharing of web resources (data, tools, methods)

• Coordination. The workgroup acting together and building things together.

The backbone of the proposed automated VWG website is an XML-based cataloging system that maintains a well-structured virtual workspace. The XML data system allows linking of workgroup discussion with any of the submitted content items. The access and exploration of distributed data will be facilitated by new data integration and browsing tool, Voyager. The developed and tested tools and methods will be applicable to a broad range of scientific and public endeavors and will be made accessible to the broader community and their use and further evolution will be encouraged.

EPA - WebVisWeb-based Visibility Information System

Project Objectives and Approach: 1. Collect, QC and and archive ASOS visibility data 2. Deliver processed hourly visibility data to public and AQ communities 3. Use a Web-based system to support the acquisition and dissemination of visibility data

 Data Acquisition and Processing: The NWS ASOS visibility and meteorological data will be acquired. The “raw” 1-minute data will undergo QA/QC, filtering for meteorological effects (precipitation, fog, etc.), correction for high relative humidity, and aggregated to 1-hour values.

Data Storage and Web-enablement: The acquired and processed will be formatted and stored in a database for web access/query and spatio-temporal rendering.

Application to Air Quality Assessment: WebVIS will seek incorporation of visibility data into air quality monitoring and assessment programs.

Partnership in Building Value-adding Processes: A number of collaborating partners from government, industry, and academia will participate in the value adding chain that will deliver deliver visibility data to the air quality community.

EPA: The Environmental Monitoring for Community Access and Public Access (EMPACT) program is focused on near real time monitoring, such as WebVis. EMPACT will coordinate the project and provide partial funding. The Office of Air & Radiation (OAR) and OAQPS will play a role in directing the project toward Regional Haze and PM2.5 programs.

NOAA – The NOAA has an interest in using the ASOS data for applications such as aviation and disaster management and can facilitate acquisition of the high resolution ASOS data from the NWS. NOAA Aeronomy Lab will provide partial funding for the proposed project.

Sonoma Technology – Sonoma Technology, Inc has experience with acquiring, QA/QC, and relating ASOS data to PM2.5 (Richards et al., 1997).

Washington University. The Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis (CAPITA) has experience in the acquiring, processing, sharing through the web and using of visibility data for PM analysis.

NOAA - ASOS

Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants

EPA - ICAP Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants

The objective of ICAP (Phase II; 2002 - 2003) is to assess issues of pollutant long-range transport and impacts on regional climate. Specific questions:

(1) Impact of intercontinental manmade anthropogenic emissions on U.S. AQ;

(2) The role of US anthropogenic emissions from U.S. on the AQ of other regions;

(3) Estimate the contribution of utility, transportation, biomass emissions to ozone, PM AQ

The ICAP primary emphasis of the project is on the modeling of pollutant emissions and intercontinental transport. The project is conducted by a team of investigators: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CEP); Harvard University; Stanford University; Argonnne National Laboratory (ANL); Washington University (CAPITA); University of Tennessee and U of Iowa.

CAPITA Sub-project, Task 6:

Analyze and evaluate the model results using surface-based, aircraft and satellite observations

The objective of this modest task is to explore observations such as daily satellite data (TOMS, SeaWiFS, GOES), routine surface monitoring (PM10, PM2.5, Aerosol Chemistry), and special remote sensing data (LIDAR, sun photometers) to evaluate and complement the model results and to characterize the impacts of intercontinental pollutant transport on short- and long-term U.S. air quality and its implication on global air quality.

RPO - CATT

Combined Aerosol Transport Tool

RPO - FASTNet

Fast Aerosol Sensing Tools for Natural Event Tracking

NASA - REASON

Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants

Internal Projects

NAM Dust

NAM Smoke

SeaWiFS

CAPITA – Publications

Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants

CAPITA – Presentations

Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of Air Pollutants