Date/Time Date(s) - 28/05/202511:00 am - 12:00 pm
Title: Emissions of atmospheric aerosols in Canada’s North: Big sources of tiny particles
Date: Wednesday May 28, 2025
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm
Room: ABB A404
Host: Dr. Sarah Styler
Abstract: Climate change influences many aspects of atmospheric chemistry and air quality (AQ), and these changes are more rapid in the north, which is warming several times faster than the global mean rate. These impacts include increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, and decreased snow and ice cover. With these changes comes greater emissions of atmospheric aerosols, tiny airborne particles that deteriorate AQ and play an important role in the Earth’s climate system. In this seminar, I will present two projects that seek to understand the AQ impact of wildfire smoke and high latitude dust emissions, two sources of atmospheric aerosols that will grow in a warmer climate.
First, the seminar will present recent work on emissions of mineral dust aerosols from a glacial valley in the Yukon (Ä’äy Chù Valley in Kluane National Park). In addition to providing a case study on how glacial recession leads to increased dust emissions, the project has served as an opportunity to develop new analytical chemistry methods for characterizing airborne particles including by single particle ICP-MS. Second, the seminar will present recent work to implement the Canadian Forest Fire Emissions Prediction System (CFFEPS) into the chemical transport model GEOS-Chem in order to predict fine particulate matter concentrations (PM2.5) in Canada during the wildfire season. The CFFEPS inventory was used within GEOS-Chem to simulate PM2.5 concentrations in Canada for 2019 and 2021, and the modeled concentrations were compared against field observations. The computer simulations accurately represent the transport of wildfire smoke opening the door to further modeling studies on the environmental impact of wildfire smoke in Canada.
Biography: Patrick Hayes received his PhD in environmental chemistry from Northwestern University and afterwards was a CIRES Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Colorado. In 2013, he moved to Université de Montréal, where he is now a full professor in the department of chemistry. Professor Hayes’ research focuses on the atmospheric chemistry of air pollution and climate forcing agents, especially atmospheric aerosols, and his group has undertaken a variety of different projects in this domain ranging from field work in the Canadian Arctic to chemical transport modeling of wildfire smoke.