The Council of the American Geophysical Union this week put out a policy statement that says humans are changing climate in an unprecedented way. “Human impacts on the climate system include increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and their substitutes, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.), air pollution, increasing concentrations of airborne particles, and land alteration,” the statement says.
Brian Lamb, a WSU faculty member and a Boeing Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a group of researchers from the Laboratory for Atmospheric Research recently received a grant to look at the effects of such global climate change on regional air quality. With support from the Environmental Protection Agency and in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest Forest Service Center, the group will work to model air quality in the United States in the mid-21st century. The group will examine how global warming will affect air quality on regional and urban scales, how land use change affects air quality and how fire and fire management affects regional air quality. For more information, contact Brian Lamb at 509.335.5702 or blamb@wsu.edu.
