News Archive

Winter 2022

  • Congratulations to graduate student Samar Minallah for receiving an NCAR ASP Postdoctoral Fellowship! Samar will be working with CGD on ice sheet modeling.
  • New paper on the impact of climate on future pollen emissions led by graduate student Yingxiao Zhang is now published at Nature Communications. See the associated media articles from CNN, National Geographic, NBC News, the AP, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New Scientist, and NPR’s All Things Considered. We worked with The Conversation to provide a summary piece as well!
  • Congratulations to graduate student Yingxiao Zhang, recipient of the UM College of Engineering Richard F. and Eleanor A. Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement award!
  • Presentations from the group at the AMS 2022 Meeting include:
    • Monday, January 24 4A.1: The terrestrial biosphere: An interface between atmospheric chemistry and climate (Allison Steiner; Walter Orr Roberts Lecturer)
    • Tuesday, January 25 5A.1: Examining the role of soil moisture on soil NOx emissions (Graduate student Daniel Huber)
    • Thursday, January 27 13.3: Modeling of pollen rupture mechanisms and their role in cloud formation (Postdoc Tamanna Subba)
  • FACSS (Frontiers in Atmospheric Chemistry Seminar Series) is back at it for Winter 2022. Check out the schedule here!

Fall 2021

  • Presentations from the group at the AGU Fall Meeting 2021 include:
    • Tuesday, December 14 A24I-08: The role of in-canopy processes on the formation of organic nitrates: A comparison between two temperature forest sites (Former postdoc Dandan Wei)
    • Tuesday, December 14 A25Q-1883: Simulating pollen-meteorology interactions and evaluating the impacts of pollen on cold cloud formation processes (Graduate student Yingxiao Zhang)
    • Tuesday, December 14 A25Q-1884: Modeling of pollen rupture mechanisms during a thunderstorm event (Postdoc Tamanna Subba)
    • Friday, December 17 A52B-05: Modeling lake spray aerosol at regional and global scales (Allison Steiner)
    • Friday, December 17 C54C-07: Modeling the Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindukush glacial mass balance and ice dynamics using the Open Global Glacier Model (Graduate student Samar Minallah)
  • New paper alert – former postdoc Dandan Wei has a model update paper out that evaluates the 1D canopy-chemistry FORCAsT model with the 2016 UMBS PROPHET observations.
  • Frontiers in Atmospheric Chemistry Seminar Series (FACSS) is back for Fall 2021! Talks will be every other week this term with our speaker lineup here. Sign up in advance to receive a unique webinar link every week. Students at UM can sign up for CLIMATE 501.003 for a one-credit class that includes paper discussions.
  • Graduate student Samar Minallah finally gets to move out to Boulder as part of her UCAR Next Generation Fellowship – Samar will be working with CISM and the Open Global Glacier Model on Himalayan ice sheets. (How is that we are now working on ice sheets? Good question…. but it’s been a fun project so far and a great collaboration with colleague Jeremy Bassis from CLaSP and Bill Lipscomb from NCAR)
  • UM Graduate students: Interested in developing real climate solutions? Take a look at the new Rackham Climate Solutions Certificate launched by CLaSP and SEAS to combat climate change. Apply for the program by November 1!

Summer 2021

  • New publication is out for postdoc Tamanna Subba on the potential for biological particle events in the Central Great Plains.
  • Welcome to undergrad summer researchers Nitya Nakirekanti and Lunia Oriol! Nitya is working on a new pollen data visualization tool, and Lunia is continuing her research on aerosol deposition.
  • Also welcome to REU undergraduate Brian Rakoczy from Central Michigan University! Brian has set up an ozone garden in front the Climate and Space Research building and will be analyzing CASTNET ozone data for the region.
  • And with welcomes there are also farewells – good luck to Ana Amiri-Farahani who will be moving to the IMPROVE group at UC Davis, and to Dandan Wei who is moving to Columbia/Lamont/CCNY. Good luck in your next steps, we will miss you!

2021: SPRING

2020: THE REST OF THE YEAR….

It’s hard to come up with a list of “news” during this incredibly difficult and challenging time. We are all working from home (thank you, computational research), meeting online, and trying to stay healthy and sane. I have been amazed at the work that everyone in the group has been able to accomplish under the new normal. And good things have been happening: papers and proposals are getting submitted, and we keep trying to understand how we can do research and keep moving on during this challenging time. And there are some bright spots:

  • Former grad student Matthew Wozniak (now a postdoc at Princeton) has has final dissertation chapter online, titled Influence of vertical heterogeneities in the canopy microenvironment on inter-annual variability of carbon uptake in temperate deciduous forests . Check out Figure 7, which shows how even multi-layer canopies can struggle to capture observed diffuse light.
  • We are part of the Department of Energy’s Science Team for the new AMF3 deployment in the Southeastern US. Stay tuned for more updates about the site and how it will be selected.
  • Congratulations to Samar Minallah, who was selected for the UCAR Next Generation Fellowship! Samar will be transitioning her work from understanding Great Lakes precipitation and runoff to working on glaciers and GLOF events in the Himalayas.
  • Join us for weekly online talks with the Frontiers in Atmospheric Chemistry Seminar Series (FACSS): Fall 2020 schedule is here – hope to see you online!

Presentations from the group at the 2020 AGU Fall Meeting include:

  • Monday, December 7: A006-0009: Insights into the formaldehyde (HCHO) budget at PROPHET Forest using leaf-level laboratory measurements and the FORCAsT model for biosphere-atmosphere exchange (with collaborator Josh Shutter)
  • Tuesday, December 8: A051-08: Secondary organic aerosol formation from isoprene organic nitrates in a temperate forest (postdoc Dandan Wei)
  • Tuesday, December 8: A046-07: Lake spray aerosol emissions alter thermodynamic equilibrium in the Great Lakes (postdoc Anahita Amiri-Farahani)
  • Wednesday, December 16: H194-0012: Evaluation of terrestrial water and energy budget components over the St. Lawrence River Basin (with collaborator Yiwen Mei)
  • Thursday, December 10: A092-0005: Modeling pollen emission variations over the continental U.S. with climate change (graduate student Yingxiao Zhang)
  • Thursday, December 10: A092-0007: Identification of potential primary biological particle emissions and rupture events at the Southern Great Plains ARM site (postdoc Tamanna Subba)
  • Friday December 11: U015-11: Understanding hydroclimatic drivers of harmful algal blooms in the Laurentian Great Lakes region(graduate student Samar Minallah: invited for last year’s OSPA award)

2020: PRE-COVID

Ah… the year was off to such a great start!

  • Graduate student Samar Minallah received an AGU Fall Meeting Outstanding Student Paper award for her poster titled “Role of moisture flux divergence in mid-summer precipitation decrease over the Great Lakes region” – Congratulations Samar!
  • Welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Tamanna Subba! Tamanna will be joining us from Dibrugarh University and will be working on emissions and fate of biological aerosol particles.
  • March 2: Webinar re-broadcast of Allison’s AGU Atmospheric Sciences Centennial Talks titled “Terrestrial Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions” is here. If you are interested in any of the graphics, they are now published in an ACS Accounts of Chemical Research manuscript available here.
  • March 9: CLaSP hosts the second part of our Rackham funded workshop titled “Pathways to Societal Engagement” featuring speakers Peter Frumhoff from UCS, Missy Stultz, Jeff Masters, Knight-Wallace Fellow Marielba Nunez, and CLaSP alumni Matt Irish and Dalal Najib. It was a wonderful event talking about how to develop and chart pathways that use your science for societal engagement. Little did we know (we, meaning everyone except Jeff Masters, who warned me about the pandemic) that this would be our last in-person gathering for a long time….

FALL 2019

  • Presentations from the group at the 2019 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Monday December 9: A11C-04: Terrestrial Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions (Allison’s presentation in the Atmospheric Sciences Centennial Session)
    • Tuesday, December 10: GC23F-1465: Conceptualizing uncertainty in multidisciplinary modeling of harmful algal blooms under climate change: Takeaways for ecosystem services planning in Western Lake Erie (former graduate student Samantha Basile)
    • Wednesday December 11: A31C-07: Investigation of isoprene dynamics during the day to night ransition period (postdoc Dandan Wei)
    • Wednesday December 11: A32D-03: Space-based observations of seasonsal NOx emissions from agriculture (graduate student Daniel Huber)
    • Friday December 13: H51V-1836: Role of moisture flux divergence in mid-summer precipitation decrease over the Great Lakes region (graduate student Samar Minallah)
  • Welcome to new Ph.D. student Yingziao Zhang! She will be working on new simulations of pollen in mixed phase clouds.
  • And another welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Anahita Farahani. Ana is coming to Michigan from UC Riverside as a CIGLR Postdoctoral Fellow and will be working on the aerosolization of lake spray from harmful algal blooms.
  • Graduate student Samar Minallah travels to the Yosemite Field Station to participate in the Advanced Climate Dynamics Course graduate student summer school.
  • September 18: Dr. Steiner presents a poster at Rackham’s State of Graduate Education symposium on CLaSP’s new initiative titled “Pathways to improve graduate student education through societal engagement.”

SUMMER 2019

  • Welcome to PICASSO REU student Olivia van Buskirk for the summer! Olivia is a rising senior at Central Michigan University and is working on vegetation water content in SMAP.
  • July 26: Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Wozniak, who successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Dr. Wozniak is heading to the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to start a postdoctoral fellowship.
  • August 30: Congratulations to Dr. Samantha Basile for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation. Dr. Basile will be starting a new position at the GLISA in Ann Arbor.
  • Former undergraduate (and current Stanford graduate student) Peiyun Zhu’s paper on the role of clouds on carbon uptake is finally online Earth Interactions.

WINTER 2019

  • Presentations from the group at the 2019 American Meteorological Society Meeting in Phoenix include:
    • Tuesday, January 8: Abstract J4.4: GCM-driven projections of future pollen emissions and counts over the United States (graduate student Matthew Wozniak)
    • Tuesday, January 8: Abstract 399: Whither diffuse? Synthesizing the influence of diffuse light on the biosphere (Allison Steiner)
    • Sunday, January 6: Abstract S21: Assessing the atmospheric deposition of phosphorous to the Great Lakes (Undergraduate Sarah Hutchinson)
  • Welcome to new postdoctoral fellow Dandan Wei! She just completed her Ph.D. at Penn State and will be working on modeling organic nitrates in the forest canopy.
  • Volume 2 of Advances in Atmospheric Chemistry is now published – see the description and chapter contents here.

FALL 2018

  • Welcome to new graduate students Samar Minallah and Daniel Huber!
  • Dr. Steiner discusses Harmful Algal Blooms at the Shady Ladies Chemistry Club in Detroit. They even designed a signature cocktail for the event!
  • Dr. Steiner is a panelist on the UM College of Engineering discussion of the National Academy of Sciences report on sexual harassment.
  • Undergraduate Sarah Hutchinson presents her summer SURE research projection on the atmospheric deposition of phosphorus to the Great Lakes at the 2nd Midwest Student Conference on Atmospheric Research in at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
  • Our CoastalSEES project team holds a stakeholder engagement workshop at the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge for water managers, beach mangers, marina operators, and modelers to share information and experience about Lake Erie HABS.
  • Graduate student Matthew Wozniak presents his research at the UM Engineering Graduate Symposium.
  • Presentations from the group at the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Monday, December 10: GH13D-0954: GCM-driven projections of future pollen emissions and counts over the United States (graduate student Matthew Wozniak
    • Monday, December 10: B13I-2240: The role of vegetation canopy structure in the variability of the terrestrial carbon sink (graduate student Matthew Wozniak)
    • Tuesday, December 11: PA23D-06: Edge effects: Insights gained from a decade of interdisciplinary modeling projects in Lake Erie (collaborator Rebecca Muenich and our CoastalSEES team)
    • Thursday, December 13: A43M-2304: Simulated fate of peroxy radicals within deciduous forest canopies (Allison Steiner)
    • Friday December 14: H51W-1656: Understanding soil moisture in the temperate to boreal transition zone using SMAP and CLM model simulations (postdoc Thiago dos Santos)

SUMMER 2018

MAY 2018

  • And one more trip to Boulder to participate in the NCAR-NSF meeting for NSF Atmospheric Chemistry PIs.
  • Dr. Steiner is a session convenor at the AMS AgForestMet/Biogeosciences meeting in Boise, Idaho.
  • May 3: Seminar at NOAA GFDL talking about the group’s work on aerosol-cloud interactions, including Matt’s pollen-cloud research and former grad student Stacey’s work on urban aerosol-cloud interactions.

APRIL 2018

MARCH 2018

FEBRUARY 2018

  • Congratulations to former SEAS student Hui Xu on the publication of his paper in Climatic Change on the effects of climate change and land use on nutrient pollution.

JANUARY 2018

  • In Southern California, giving a seminars on pollen at Environmental Sciences and Engineering at CalTech and Biological and Chemical Engineering at UC Riverside.
  • Former graduate student Stacey Kawecki has a new paper from her dissertation now online in JGR-Atmospheres, discussing the importance of aerosol hygroscopicity parameters in WRF-Chem.
  • Undergraduate Karlie Wells presents a poster at the 2018 American Meteorological Society meeting titled “Historical multi-model analysis of solid precipitation in the Great Lakes region” (Poster S27)

DECEMBER 2017

  • Presentations from the group at the 2017 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Tuesday December 12: A21K-2304: Lidar measurements of boundary layer depolarization and CCSEM-EDX compositional analysis of airborne particles on collocated passive samplers throughout the forest canopy during the 2016 airborne pollen season at UMBS (graduate student Matthew Wozniak)
    • Thursday December 14:IN41C-0052: Lake Representations in Global Climate Models: An End-User Perspective (with Ricky Rood, Laura Brierly and Karlie Wells)
    • Friday December 15: Co-convening Sessions A51B, A52D, A53J and A54B on Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions and Atmospheric Chemistry

NOVEMBER 2017

  • November 13-14: NSF-sponsored Workshop in Irvine on developing a strategy for long-term trace gas measurement sites. This is open to the community and will be webcast.
  • Grad student Matthew Wozniak presents his pollen-precipitation work at the University of Michigan Engineering Graduate Symposium on November 8.
  • November 1: Visit our M-Cubed poster on atmospheric phosporous deposition based on a network of ground-based samples and WRF-Chem modeling. With collaborator Tim Dvontch in Public Health.

OCTOBER 2017

  • Undergraduate Karlie Wells presents work from the SEES project at the Midwest Climate Student Conference in Urbana-Champaign, IL.
  • A new paper co-authored by Dr. Steiner on the ozone-temperature relationship in the Midwest is now out in Atmospheric Environment.
  • This month is all about workshops, including the Ozone Deposition Workshop at Lamont-Doherty (October 1-2), the Science Users SMAP meeting at MIT (October 18-19), and the National Academies Workshop on The Future of Boundary Layer Observing (October 23-26).

SEPTEMBER 2017

  • Welcome to Thiago dos Santos, a new postdoc in the group! Thiago recently finished his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and will be working on NASA SMAP data with the CLM.
  • September 11-14: iLEAPS Science Conference in Oxford, UK.
  • September 18-19: Dr. Steiner attends the final REQUA project meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece.
  • September 26-29: Dr. Steiner co-chairs the 2017 College of Engineering NextProf workshop.
  • Congratulations to graduate student Matthew Wozniak on the acceptance of his pollen emissions paper in GMD!

AUGUST 2017

  • Congratulations to Yang Li for the publication of her second dissertation manuscript, titled “Impact of in-cloud aqueous processes on the chemistry and transport of biogenic volatile organic compounds” now online in JGR-Atmospheres.

JULY 2017

JUNE 2017

  • Graduate student Matt Wozniak has a new paper online in Geoscientific Model Development Discussions on the pollen emissions model.
  • Welcome to visiting graduate student Serafeim (Makis) Kontos from Thessaloniki University! Makis is visiting the group through October as part of the EU-funded Marie Curie Training Grant.
  • Farewell to group members Stacey Kawecki and Peiyun Zhu! Stacey will be starting a postdoctoral fellowship position at Colorado State University and Peiyun is headed off to graduate school at Stanford.
  • Congratulations to graduate student Samantha Basile on the publication of paper titled “Projected precipitation changes within the Great Lakes and Western Lake Erie Basin: A multi-model analysis of intensity and seasonality” now available online in the International Journal of Climatology.

MAY 2017

  • May 22: NSF CoastalSEES project team meeting for year one in the Space Research Building (12-5PM). Project updates are provided on the project website.
  • Dr. Steiner participates in Hill visits in Washington D.C. representing UCAR science.
  • May 5: Congratulations to Stacey Kawecki for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation!

APRIL 2017

  • April 24: Congratulations to Yang Li for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation!
  • Congratulations to undergraduate Peiyun Zhu for her graduation. Peiyun will be attending graduate school at Stanford in the fall.
    • peiyun grad
  • Visit to the group by Mary Barth, NCAR scientist, who will be presenting a research seminar titled “Thunderstorms and Atmospheric Composition: A Meeting of Cloud Physics, Dynamics, Lightning, and Chemistry” on April 25 at 3:30PM in room 2424.
  • April 17: Visit by Professor Shiliang Wu from Michigan Technological University titled “GLASP: Global Arsenic Pollution” at 10AM in the Donahue room. Dr. Wu is visiting as part of the Graham Institute Catalyst Grant project titled Atmospheric Modeling in Human Health & Climate Change Risk Assessment: Wildfire Smoke Exposures.

MARCH 2017

  • Dr. Steiner presents at seminar in the Geosciences Department at Western Michigan University.

FEBRUARY 2017

  • Congratulations to undergraduate Peiyun Zhu for two awards: the Earth and Environmental Sciences department Undergraduate Excellence award as well as the AGU Outstanding Student Paper award!
  • Welcome to visiting researcher Vladimir Ivanov from National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography/Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NIGGG/BAS) as part of the Marie Curie IRSES grant titled “REQUA: Regional climate-air quality interactions”

JANUARY 2017

  • Dr. Steiner presents a seminar at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Global Change Science Distinguished Lecturer Series on the role of BVOC chemistry across spatial scales.
  • Presentations from the group at the 2017 AMS Annual Meeting include:
    • Thursday, January 26, Abstract 6.2: Dust as ice nuclei: Implications on a mesoscale convective event in the Central Great Plains – presented by graduate student Stacey Kawecki
    • Plus three posters in the Sunday Student poster session from the Great Lakes MDP team:
      • S24: Modeled sensitivity of tropospheric ozone to PBL height in the Great Lakes region – from MDP Team Jennifer Bukowski, Lindsey Fitzpatrick and Kyle Richardville
      • S57: Effects of WRF model resolution on convective features of a severe weather event – from MDP Team Kimberly Frauhammer, Rafal Ogorek, and Lindsay Rasmussen
      • S63: Modeling lake effect snow with an interactive lake model in WRF – from MDP team Nick Azzopardi, Mukund Manikantan and Reem Raba
  • Dr. Steiner presents a seminar at Michigan State University’s Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences Department’s Triple-G symposium series on our work on moisture fluxes in the Great Lakes region.

DECEMBER 2016

  • Presentations from the group at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Monday, December 12: A13H-0388: A 10-year climatology of pollen aerosol for the continental United States: Implications for aerosol-climate interactions, Abstract A13H-0388 (graduate student Matthew Wozniak)
    • Thursday, December 15: NG41B-1736: The atmospheric moisture budget over the Great lakes: Comparing reanalysis and CMIP5 present-day simulations (Steiner, Gates and Posselt)
    • Thursday, December 15: A41C-0042:Comparing turbulent mixing of biogenic VOC across model scales (graduate student Yang Li)
    • Thursday, December 15: A43E-0276: One-dimensional canopy modeling of biogenic VOC during the 2016 PROPHET AMOS campaign (visiting graduate student Sarah Kavassalis)
    • Friday, December 16: B42B-02: The global influence of cloud optical thickness on terrestrial carbon uptake (undergraduate Peiyun Zhu)
  • Interested in learning more about the publication process? Come by the AGU and ESWN Publications special session titled Success in Scientific Publishing and Outreach at the Fall AGU meeting. Dr. Steiner is representing journals as an editor at JGR-Atmospheres.
  • Congratulations to former postdoc Kirsti Ashworth on the final publication of her paper titled “Modelling bidirectional fluxes of methanol and acetaldehyde with the FORCAsT canopy exchange model” in ACP.
  • Final poster presentations from the Great Lakes MDP group! Look for upcoming abstracts in the Student Poster session at the American Meteorological Society Meeting in January.

NOVEMBER 2016

  • Graduate student Matthew Wozniak visits collaborator Fabien Solmon to work on the incorporation of pollen aerosol into RegCM in Toulouse, France.
  • Dr. Steiner represented CLaSP and the Earth Sciences Women’s Network at the MESTA Earth and Space Sciences Careers Day.

OCTOBER 2016

  • October 24: Dr. Steiner presents a seminar on atmospheric chemistry across the planetary boundary layer at Michigan Tech University.
  • Dr. Steiner attends the UCAR member and PACUR meetings in Boulder, CO.
  • October 10: Dr. Steiner participates in a panel on “Exposure and Health in a Changing Environment” in the UM School of Public Health hosted by Andy Ault.

SEPTEMBER 2016

  • Dr. Steiner presents on service (and doing *just* the right amount!) to the 2016 CoE NextProf workshop.
  • Graduate student Yang Li and Dr. Steiner present posters at the IGAC Conference in Breckenridge, CO.
  • Interested in how forest canopy interactions affect atmospheric chemistry? Stop by our IGAC Wednesday afternoon workshop describing CANEXMIP: A canopy modeling intercomparison project. More information to follow on other activities soon.
  • Congrats to grad student Stacey Kawecki on the publication of her paper titled “Effects of urban plume aerosols on a mesoscale convective system” to be published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. Link to follow soon!
  • Welcome to visiting student Sarah Kavassalis! Sarah is working on her Ph.D. in Chemistry with Jennifer Murphy at the University of Toronto and will be working with the group this term on 1D canopy modeling.
  • A kickoff meeting for the new NSF CoastalSEES is held in Ann Arbor for our project titled “Enhancing sustainability in coastal communities threatened by harmful algal blooms by advancing and integrating environmental and socio-economic modeling.”

SUMMER 2016

MAY 2016

  • Congratulations to Dr. Susan Cheng who successfully defended her dissertation on May 9! Susan is off to a postdoc at Cornell University.
  • Grad student Matthew Wozniak attends the RegCM workshop at the ICTP in Trieste Italy.
  • Congratulations to grad student Matthew Wozniak who passed Step 2 of his qualifying exam and is officially a Ph.D. candidate!
  • Dr. Steiner participates in Hill visits for the UCAR President’s Advisory Council on University Relations (PACUR) meeting.

APRIL 2016

  • Graduate student Matthew Wozniak sets up the miniMPL at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) … we’re hoping to see some pollen plumes soon!
    • lidar
  • Graduate student Stacey Kawecki and undergraduate group member Peiyun Zhang present posters at the Michigan Geophysical Union on April 7.

MARCH 2016

  • Graduate student Yang Li is awarded the Barbour Scholarship from the Rackham Graduate School. This fellowship recognizes outstanding students from the Orient. Congratulations Yang!
  • Graduate student Yang Li travels to NCAR in March for a follow-up visit from the Visiting Student Program last summer working on LES modeling with Mary Barth.
  • Dr. Steiner travels to India for 36 hours! Yes, it’s true… but it was worth the trip to attend the iLEAPS Scientific Steering Committee meeting in Chandighar, India, hosted by Vinayak Sinha at the IISER Mohali.

FEBRUARY 2016

  • February 11: Dr. Charlie Stainer from the University of Iowa visits the group to meet with our Great Lakes MDP team and present a seminar.

JANUARY 2016

  • Graduate student Stacey Kawecki presented at the American Meteorological Society meeting, with a talk titled “Investigating the impacts of aerosol composition on a mesoscale convective system in the Central Great Plains” (Session 4A, Tuesday 12 January)

DECEMBER 2015

  • Farewell to visiting student Thanos Tsikerdekis from University of Thessaloniki in Greece! Thanos was visiting in 2015 as part of our EU Marie Curie Grant on regional chemistry and air quality modeling.
  • Presentations from the group at the 2015 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Monday December 14: A11T-07: FORCAsTing the influence of a forest canopy on the bi-directional exchange of gases and aerosols (Postdoctoral fellow Kirsti Ashworth)
    • Monday, December 14: A23F-0398: Transport and radiative impacts of atmospheric pollen using online, observation-based emissions (Ph.D. student Matthew Wozniak)
    • Monday, December 14: ED13D-0902: The Earth Science Women’s Network: The principles that guide our mentoring (co-author Allison Steiner)
    • Wednesday, December 16: A33L-0357: Dust size parameterization in RegCM4: Impact of aerosol burden and radiative forcing (Visiting Ph.D. student Thanos Tsikerdekis)
    • Thursday, December 17: B41I-06: Fluxes at the canopy interface: Synthesizing across the canopy, boundary layer and regional scales (Allison Steiner)
    • Friday, December 18: B53D-0589: Testing Earth System model assumptions of photosynthetic parameters with in situ leaf measurements from a temperate zone forest (Ph.D. student Susan Cheng)

NOVEMBER 2015

OCTOBER 2015

SEPTEMBER 2015

AUGUST 2015

JULY 2015

  • A new paper by postdoc Kirsti Ashworth about the new canopy model FORCAsT is now online at Geoscientific Model Development Discussions.
  • Dr. Steiner travels to visit the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO to work with visiting student Yang Li, and her NCAR advisor for the summer, Dr. Mary Barth.

JUNE 2015

  • Graduate student Yang Li presents a poster on LES modeling with chemistry at the annual Annual WRF User’s Workshop in Boulder, CO.
  • Article on the mentoring practicies of the Earth Science Women’s Network co-authored by Dr. Steiner is now online in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
  • June 15-17: Three days of workshops for the NOAA Coastal and Ocean Climate Applications (COCA) project investigating the role of agricultural land use and climate on algal blooms in the western Lake Erie basin. Dr. Steiner presents climate work with Ph.D. student Samantha Basile at Old Woman CreekOttawa National Wildlife Refuge and Ann Arbor.
  • Farewell to graduate student Yang Li as she heads off to NCAR for the summer as part of the NCAR Graduate Visitor Program! Yang will be working with Mary Barth over the summer on Large Eddy Simulation (LES) modeling with chemistry.

MAY 2015

  • Our new laboratory study on pollen as cloud condensation nucelei is now online in Geophysical Research Letters. More information about the article is discussed in this video, with media coverage by AGUNewsweek, and CBSNews and the cover image of GRL!
    • GRL
  • A new review paper on ozone-temperature relationships, co-authored with Sally Pusede and Ron Cohen, is now online in Chemical Reviews.
  • Graduate student Yang Li presents a poster at the DISCOVER-AQ Science meeting in Boulder titled “Large-eddy simulation of atmospheric chemistry during the DISCOVER-AQ 2011 campaign.”
  • Welcome to visiting graduate student Thanos Tsikerdekis! Thanos is a graduate student with Prodromus Zanis at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and will be working with us through 2015 as part of the Marie Curie IRSES grant titled “REQUA: Regional climate-air quality interactions”

APRIL 2015

  • April 16: Congratulations to the first term Great Lakes MDP students! They presented their first set of WRF and WRF-Chem simulations over the Great Lakes region. This group will be continuing their projects in Fall 2015.
  • April 2: University of Michigan Editor’s Tea: Panel discussion on AGU Director of Publications Brooks Hanson. 1:30 PM in the Clark Library Instructional Space
  • April 1: Michigan Geophysical Union, Palmer Commons. Yang Li and Jordan Swift presented posters, and thanks to grad student Stacey Kawecki for co-organizing!

MARCH 2015

  • Share your views on the future of atmospheric chemistry research for the upcoming NRC report. Further information on the study and the community input phase may be found here.
  • Dr. Steiner attends the LEAP workshop at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, hosted by Alex Guenther.

JANUARY 2015

  • A new College of Engineering Multidisciplinary Design program is launching this term that will work to advance modeling the Great Lakes system as described here. This two-year project is driven by student projects, so stay tuned for new results!
  • Presentations from the group at the 2015 AMS Meeting include:
    • Sunday, January 4: Meteorological variability and the observed aerosol first indirect effect over the Southern Great Plains (REU student Samuel Pennypacker)
    • Wednesday, January 7: Investigating the impacts of dust and anthropogenic emission on indirect aerosol effects in convective clouds in the Southern Great Plains (Ph.D. student Stacey Kawecki)
    • Wednesday, January 7: Projected precipitation changes within the Great Lakes region: A multi-scale analysis of precipitation intensity and seasonality (Master’s student Samantha Basile)

DECEMBER 2014

  • Congratulations to Ph.D. student Susan Cheng on the acceptance of her first paper in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. It uses AmeriFlux data to quantify the role of diffuse light on carbon updake.
  • Former Ph.D. student Alex Bryan’s manuscript is now online at JGR-Atmospheres, titled “Regional modeling of surface-atmosphere interactions and their impact on Great Lakes hydroclimate”
  • Presentations from the group at the 2014 AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Monday December 15: H13C-1129: Regional modeling of surface-atmosphere interactions and their impact on Great Lakes hydroclimate (former Ph.D. student Alex Bryan)
    • Wednesday, December 17: GC33A-0479: Projected precipitation changes within the Great Lakes region: A multi-scale analysis of precipitation intensity and seasonality (Master’s student Samantha Basile)
    • Thursday, December 18: B41C-0047: Influence of cloud optical thickness on surface diffuse light and carbon update in forests (Ph.D. student Susan Cheng)

NOVEMBER 2014

  • Congratulations to Yang Li who was awarded an NCAR Graduate Visitor fellowship! She will visit Boulder next summer to work with Mary Barth on LES modeling with chemistry.
  • November 14: Grad students Stacey Kawecki and Yang Li present posters on recent research at the UM Engineering Graduate Symposium.OCTOBER 2014
  • October 20: Dr. Steiner presents at the NC State Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department seminar.
  • October 9: SNRE postdoc Zhiyuan Song presents a poster at the UM MCubed symposium titled “Dynamics of rural community forest use and labor migration in developing countries.”

SEPTEMBER 2014

  • Postdoc Kirsti Ashworth publishes a News and Views piece in Nature Climate Change titled Atmospheric chemistry: A new player in climate change.
  • September 29: Dr. Steiner presents recent work on pollen phenological modeling at International Congress of Biometeorology in Cleveland, OH.
  • We’re changing up the format for AOSS 747 (Graduate Student Seminar) this term – students will be writing a research proposal and working on professional development. Contact Dr. Steiner if you are interested!
  • Group meetings for the semester will be held on Thursdays from 2-3PM in SRB 2218. All interested students are welcome to attend.

AUGUST 2014

  • Congratulations to Alex Bryan for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on August 15! Alex will be starting a postdoc at the Northeastern Regional Climate Center in UMass Amherst in the fall.
  • Welcome to Cristina Davila Arriaga, a graduate student from the University of Sao Paolo, and working with the group on regional climate modeling. Her visit is funded by the UM-Brazil partnership for sustainability.
  • Farewell to REU undergraduate Sam Pennypacker, who is headed back to UC Berkeley. Stay tuned for Sam’s presentation of his REU work at the AMS Student Meeting in January 2015.
  • Dr. Steiner and MS student Samantha Basile present recent work on Great Lakes precipitation intensity to stakeholders at three workshops sponsored by the NOAA COCA (Coastal and Ocean Climate Applications) project.

JULY 2014

  • Dr. Steiner is co-author on a forum piece is published in Eos on strategies for improving scientist and stakeholder communication. This is the outcome of a 2012 AGU session co-chaired with Charles Vorosmarty, Bill Gutowski and Bernice Rosenszweig.

JUNE 2014

  • The Biogenic Hydrocarbons and the Atmosphere GRC is finally here! Thanks to our US funding agencies (NSF, NASA and NOAA) for providing early career scientist support, and also to all the speakers and discussion leaders for a great conference.
  • Dr. Steiner participates in the GLISA Adaptation in the Great Lakes region Conference in Ann Arbor, and will be part of a panel discussion on June 25 titled “Projections and Downscaling Data.”
  • Grad student Stacey Kawecki heads off to Boulder for the WRF User’s Meeting. She will be presenting a poster on her work titled “The impact of pollution state on the direct and indirect aerosol effects on convective events in the Southern Great Plains.”
  • Congratulations to graduate student Yang Li for passing the qualifying exam!
  • Welcome to new graduate student Matthew Wozniak! Matthew will be starting in the group this summer after completing his undergradate degree in Physics from Slippery Rock University.

MAY 2014

  • Last call for GRC Biogenic Hydrocarbons and the Atmosphere registration! Applications will be accepted until June 1. Janne and I hope to see you in Spain!
  • Welcome to AOSS undergraduate and CoE SURE student Jordan Swift. Jordan will be working with postdoc Kirsti Ashworth this summer on the NSF canopy project and meteorological events that lead to clean and polluted conditions at the canopy field sites.
  • Congratulations to graduating Master’s student Dori Mermelstein. She’ll be around for the summer before moving on to a new job at Accenture. Dori has been with the group for a long time and we’ll miss her!
  • The first semester of our CoE Multidisciplinary Design Program (MDP) project is wrapping up… stay posted for more progress on the maple-seed microdrone project!

APRIL 2014

  • April 7: Graduate students Alex Bryan and Stacey Kawecki present recent work at the Michigan Geophysical Union (MGU). Congratulations to Alex for winning the Student Choice award!
  • As a result of our US-Egypt collaboration grant, we have a new paper published on the simulation of ozone and aerosols over Cairo using the coupled regional chemistry-climate model RegCM-CHEM.

MARCH 2014

JANUARY 2014

  • Dr. Steiner is appointed as a new editor for JGR Atmospheres and will be covering papers on land-atmosphere interactions.
  • A new paper co-authored on the effects of land cover expansion on biogenic VOC emisisons is now online.

DECEMBER 2013

  • Presentations from the group at the 2013 Fall American Geophysical Union:
    • Monday, A11B-0020: Investigating the direct climatic forcing of pollen and subpollen particles, Yang Li, Allison Steiner and Fabien Solmon
    • Tuesday, B21A-0439: The Impact of Diffuse Light on Terrestrial Carbon Uptake, Susan J. Cheng, Gil Bohrer, Allison L. Steiner, Knute J. Nadelhoffer and Alexander Fotis
    • Wednesday, A33E-0264: Synoptic and Local Controls on Precipitation Patterns in the Great Lakes Region, Alexander M. Bryan, Guiling Wang, Derek J. Posselt and Allison L. Steiner
    • Friday, ED51C-0621: The Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN): A member-driven network approach to supporting women in the Geosciences, Meredith G. Hastings, Rose Kontak, Manda S. Adams, Rebecca T. Barnes, Emily V. Fischer, Mirjam S. Glessmer, Tracey Holloway, Erika Marin-Spiotta, Carmen Rodrigez, Allison L. Steiner, Christine Wiedinmyer and Sandra L. Larsen
    • Friday, GC53A-1033: The role of pollution state on urban heat islands in the Midwestern United States, Stacey Kawecki, Allison L. Steiner, David J. Stensrud, Larissa Reames, Geoffrey M. Henebry

NOVEMBER 2013

  • Congratulations to Susan Cheng for winning 2nd place and the Audience Choice award in the UM 3 Minute Thesis competition!
  • Graduate students Alex Bryan and Stacey Kawecki present posters at the College of Engineering Engineering Graduate Symposium on Friday, November 15. Stop by to see the latest updates on their research.
  • Welcome to the new postdoc in our research group, Kirsti Ashworth! Kirsti will be working on the NSF Canopy project that will be looking at the role of BVOC in atmospheric chemistry across a variety of forest ecosystems.
  • A new paper online in Earth Interactions on methodological approaches to projecting the hydrologic impacts of climate change. The paper is led by Brent Lofgren of the NOAA Great Lakes research lab and is an outcome of the August 2012 workshop organized by GLERL and Dr. Steiner
  • A book chapter co-authored by Dr. Steiner on the role of plant volatiles on atmospheric chemistry is now available online .
  • Welcome to our new MCubed postdoc Zhiyuan Song! Zhiyuan will be working on the integrated modeling of forests, climate and human interactions and will be based in SNRE with collaborators Bill Currie and Arun Agrawal. Bill Currie will be presenting a project update at the MCubed Symposium on November 15.

SEPTEMBER 2013

  • At UM and interested in regional climate? Consider taking AOSS 588: Regional Scale Climate (MWF 10:30-12) with hands on data lab.
  • A new paper is now online in Earth Interactions including work from the Steiner lab on observations of the effect of atmospheric aerosols on the surface energy budget.
  • September 20: Seminar by Dr. Steiner at LDEO/Columbia titled “Regional-scale aerosol-climate feedbacks of anthropogenic and biogenic aerosols.”
  • Congratulations to grad student Stacey Kawecki for passing the AOSS department qualifying exam!
  • Graduate student Yang Li begins work at the ICTP this summer on the incorporation of pollen into the RegCM.
  • June 10-12: ESWN workshop on Building Leadership and Management Skills for Success at Brown University in Providence, followed by the ESWN Board Meeting.
  • Graduate student Alex Bryan attends the SPREAD workshop at Colorado State University in support of his work on the WSC project.

MAY 2013

May 7: Seminar at the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Yang Li for being awarded a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship! Yang’s proposal is titled “VOC Oxidation in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer.”

APRIL 2013

MARCH 2013

A new paper is now online from former grad student Ahmed Tawfik (now a postdoc at COLA) on the observed relationships between ozone and meteorology in Atmospheric Environment.

March 11-13: Dr. Steiner and grad student Alex Bryan attend the NSF Water, Sustainability and Climate project meeting in Washington DC. Take a look at what is happening on our project here.

March 13: SOAS planning meeting at EPA in Washington DC.

March 19-20: Dr. Steiner and grad student Stacey Kawecki travel to Norman, OK for a NASA IDS project meeting on Urbanization and Extreme Storms.

FEBRUARY 2013

  • Dr. Steiner presents recent work on aerosol-land surface interactions at Harvard University in the Environmental Science and Engineering seminar series on February 22.
  • Congratulations to graduate student Alex Bryan on the Distinguished Leadership Award from the UM College of Engineering, and to undergraduate student Dori Mermelstein for her AOSS Distinguished Undergraduate Award! They will be honored in the College of Engineering Leaders and Honors Awards brunch next month.

JANUARY 2013

  • Presentations from the group at the upcoming 2013 AMS Annual Meeting include:
    • Sunday, January 6: S91: Barbara Doyle, K.Kuo, D.J. Posselt and A.L. Steiner: Atmospheric water budget over the Great Lakes region and the effects of climate change
    • Sunday, January 6: S115: Dori Mermelstein, A.L. Steiner, S.J. Cheng, T.E. Twine and A. Oliphant: Observed impact of atmospheric aerosols on the surface energy budget
    • Monday, January 7: 102: Lingli He, A.L. Steiner and V.Y. Ivanov: Evaluating surface variables simulated by NARCCAP over the Great Lakes region an implications of climate change
    • Tuesday, January 8: 133: David M. Wright, D.J. Posselt and A.L. Steiner: Sensitivity of lake-effect snowfall to lake ice cover and temperature in the Great Lakes region
    • Wednesday, January 9: 4.4: Geoffrey M. Henebry, D.J. Stensrud, A.L. Steiner, C. Samll, L.R. Musacchio and K.M. de Beurs: Probing the effects of city size, shape and pollution state on storm behavior: Prospectus for a new NASA Project
    • Thursday, January 10: 9.4: A. Steiner and R.C. Owen: The effect of direct anthropogenic aerosol forcing on the Great Plains Low Level Jet- Dr. Steiner moderates the Women in Atmospheric Sciences Lunch at the 2013 AMS meeting: Wednesday 9 January, 12-1:30. The discussion topic will be “Strength through Diversity”
  • Dr. Steiner is on sabbatical for the Winter term at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas in Austin. Thanks to host Zong-Liang Yang, director of the Land, Environment and Atmospheric Dynamics group and the Center for Integrated Earth System Science. Also, thanks to Sarah Brooks at Texas A&M for collaboration on our pollen-CCN experiments!
  • January 28-30: ESWN Leadership Board meeting at Brown University in Providence. Stay tuned for new updates on the ESWN website and the upcoming workshop in June.

DECEMBER 2012

  • Presentations from the group at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Wednesday, December 5: PA-31B-1983: Kontak, R., Amanda S. Adams; Agatha M. De Boer; Meredith G. Hastings; Tracey Holloway; Erika Marin-Spiotta; Allison L. Steiner; Christine Wiedinmyer, Online and in-person networking among women in the Earth Sciences Women”s Network at www.ESWNonline.org
    • Thursday, December 6: A41I-0107: Fabien Solmon; Shalaby Ahmed; Ahmed B. Tawfik; Allison L. Steiner; Graziano Giuliani; Filippo Giorgi, Chemistry Climate Interactions Studies within the Regional Climate Model RegCM4.3
    • Thursday, December 6: B44C-06: Steiner, Allison, A.M. Bryan and A.B. Tawfik, Moving molecules from the surface layer to the atmosphere: BVOC exchange at the atmosphere-forest interface (Invited)
  • Come join us for an open house for the AOSS 320 Class poster session on Earth System Feedback projects: Dennison 260 (Central Campus), December 11, 1-3PM.

November 2012

  • Kerri Pratt’s paper (with co-authors Alex Bryan and Allison Steiner) on organic nitrates at UMBS is now online at ACP in final form.

October 2012

  • For undergraduates: application to graduate school information session, SRB 2236 from 4-5PM. Sponsored by GUSTO.

SEPTEMBER 2012

  • Dr. Steiner visits Professor Yongjiu Dai’s group at Beijing Normal University. Many thanks to their research group for being wonderful hosts!
    • bnu
  • September 17-21: Dr. Steiner presents work from Alex Bryan’s field measurements on the role of canopy structure on biogenic VOC emissions at the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry conference in Beijing, China.
  • Grad student Alex Bryan’s first paper on modeling chemistry in the UMBS canopy is now online in its final version on ACP.
  • New paper by David Wright from the NSF Water, Sustainability and Climate project on the role of lake ice in the formation in lake effect snow is now online at Monthly Weather Review.

AUGUST 2012

  • Welcome to new graduate students Stacey Kawecki and Yang Li!
  • August 25-27: Workshop organized by the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) in Muskogen, MI.

JULY 2012

  • Farewell to graduate student Ahmed Tawfik! Ahmed will be starting as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies in August. We’ll miss you, Ahmed!
  • Dr. Steiner travels to Telluride Science Research Center’s workshop on New Insights into Gas Phase Atmospheric Chemistry and presents work on 1D canopy modeling at UMBS (Bryan et al., 2012).
  • Undergraduate Barbara Doyle presents her summer work at the UM UROP Research Symposium with a poster titled “Precipitat ion in the Great Lakes Region and the Effects of Climate Change.”

JUNE 2012

  • The Earth Sciences Women’s Network (ESWN) hosts our annual workshop in Madison, WI on June 4-6. The title this year is “Networking and Communication,” facilitated by Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Chris Olex.
  • Research from the group is presented at the GRC Biogenic Hydrocarbons and the Atmosphere at Bates College in Maine, including a talk by Dr. Steiner (“The End-of-the-Day Isoprene Peak: Concentrations, canopy mixing, and implications for modeling”) and poster presentation by graduate student Alex Bryan (“How will forest succession affect BVOC chemistry in a northern Michigan forest?”)
  • Dr. Steiner receives the University of Michigan Henry Russel Award for 2013.
  • Welcome to our two undergraduate researchers for the summer: Barbara Doyle from the MSTEM program at the University of Michigan, and Morgan McCabe from New University of Florida through the AOSS REU program.

MAY 2012

  • Presentations at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) 6th Workshop on the Theory and Use of Regional Climate Models by Dr. Steiner (“Atmospheric chemistry in RegCM4”) and Ahmed Tawfik (“Chemistry-climate interactions: Soil moisture controls on air quality”)
  • The RegCM4 model development paper on interactive chemistry is now online at Geoscientific Model Development.
  • Graduate student Alex Bryan’s paper on modeling the 2009 UMBS CABINEX field campaign is now online at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
  • May 17: Dr. Steiner participates in the College of Engineering panel on writing CAREER proposals.
  • Congratulations and good luck to undergraduate research assistant Jingyi Bao! Jingyi will be starting a Ph.D. in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley in the fall.

APRIL 2012

  • Congratulations to Dr. Ahmed Tawfik, who defended his Ph.D. on April 4!
  • Graduate student posters from the group at the Michigan Geophysical Union on April 13 include Alex Bryan (“How will forest succession affect BVOC chemistry in a northern Michigan forest?”), Melissa Zagorski (“The effects of climate on oak pollen emissions”) and David Wright (“Sensitivity of lake-effect snowfall to lake ice cover and temperature in the Great Lakes region”). Congratulations to David for winning third place from AOSS.
  • April 18: Dr. Steiner presents on in-person and online networking through ESWN at the UM ADVANCE spring luncheon.
  • AOSS 588 Final Class Presentations: April 9, 11 (10-11AM) and 13 (9-11AM) in SRB 2236.

MARCH 2012

FEBRUARY 2012

  • New paper by graduate student Ahmed Tawfik on the drivers of isoprene interannual variability is accepted by Atmospheric Environment and available here.

JANUARY 2012

  • New paper by former postdoc Chris Owen on the effects of model resolution on the simulation of atmospheric aerosols now online at JGR here.
  • A new paper from our research group, Egyptian project collaborators and the ICTP is now online in Geoscientific Model Development Discussions.
  • Regional climate class now underway for the Winter 2012 semester with a new course number of AOSS 588 (MW 10-11, Friday lab 9-11AM). Also, a series of four regional climate model (RegCM4) tutorials will be taking place in February, T 3-4PM. Please contact us if you are interested in participating.

DECEMBER 2011

  • Presentations at the AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • A13K-08. Understanding the modeled ground-level ozone bias over the Southeastern U.S.: The role of soil moisture and regional climate: Ahmed B. Tawfik, Allison L. Steiner, Ahmed Shalaby, Ashraf Zakey, Fabien Solmon
    • A13C-0326. Contributions of individual biogenic VOC precursors to SOA production above a mixed forest: Kerri A. Pratt, Levi H. Mielke, Jonathan H. Slade, Paul B. Shepson, Havala O. Pye, Alexander M. Bryan, Allison L. Steiner, John Ortega, Detlev Helmig, Stephen M. Griffith, Sebastien Dusanter, Philip S. Stevens
    • ED21E-05. Facilitating career advancement for women in the Geosciences through the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN): Meredith G. Hastings, Rose Kontak, Tracey Holloway, Marina Kogan, Sandra L. Laursen, Erika Marin-Spiotta, Allison L. Steiner, Christine Wiedinmyer
    • B23A-0386. Effects of cloud optical thickness on net ecosystem exchange in a Northern U.S. temperate forest: Susan J. Cheng, Allison L. Steiner, Knute Nadelhoffer, Gil Bohrer, Peter Curtis
    • GC23C-0959. Sensitivity of Lake-Enhanced Snowfall to Lake Ice Cover in the Great Lakes Region: David M. Wright, Derek J. Posselt, Allison L. Steiner

NOVEMBER 2011

US-Egypt project meeting in Cairo at Cairo University. Thanks to our collaborators Ashraf Zakey, Magdy Wahab, Darwish Mohammed, and Ahmed Shalapy for hosting us during the trip!

November 11: University of Michigan Engineering Graduate Symposium. Student posters from our group include Ahmed Tawfik (Why do regional climate-chemistry models overestimate ground-level ozone in the southeastern US?), Alex Bryan (In-canopy gas-phase chemistry during the 2009 Cabinex field campaign: Sensitivity to isoprene chemistry and vertical mixing), and Melissa Zagorski (Where Aeropalynology and climatology meet).

November 3: Open house for AOSS 422 Boundary Layer Meteorology at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, 2-3PM. Visit our flux tower and learn about the instrumentation.

OCTOBER 2011

Two seminars at the University of Wisconsin, Madison: “Regional climate and atmospheric aerosols: The effects of resolution on climate forcing and chemistry-climate interactions” in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department and “Phenological modeling of pollen for modern climate studies” for the Climate, People and Environment Program.

Building terrariums to explain transpiration to middle-schoolers at the Dixon Learning Academy in Detroit!

Dr. Steiner presents at seminar in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis titled “Ice at the lower boundary: Cold-season processes and regional climate in northern mid-latitudes.”

SEPTEMBER 2011

  • An invitation with other NSF early career scientists to the White House for the annoucement of new family-friendly NSF policies on September 26!
    • white house
  • Teaching for Fall 2011: Boundary Layer Meteorology. Field station setup at the UM Matthaei Botanical Gardens on September 15 with open house on October 13.

AUGUST 2011

  • Presentation at the Global to Regional Climate Simulation workshop sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory on scale-dependent aerosol processes.

JULY 2011

  • Poster presentation at the Gordon Research Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry titled “Regional-scale interannual ozone variability: The role of soil moisture stress.”

JUNE 2011

  • The Earth Science Women’s Network holds an NSF-funded professional development workshop titled “Defining your Research Identity”: June 6-8, Boulder, CO. Stay tuned for information on next year’s workshop in June in Madison, WI.
  • Meteorological station installed at Dixon in Detroit… data to come soon.
  • Graduate student Ahmed Tawfik presents recent work on ozone formation under drought conditions at NCAR’s CESM Workshop in Breckenridge, CO.

MAY 2011

  • Welcome to the group’s summer undergraduate researchers: Jingyi Bao, a UM CoE SURE student, and Joy Cripe, a UM REU student from Western Illinois.
  • Outreach program on weather, climate and pollen continues at the Dixon Educational Learning Academy in Detroit… meteorological station to be installed next month!
  • Congratulations to graduate student Alex Bryan for admission to Ph.D. candidacy.

APRIL 2011

  • Congratulations to graduate student Ahmed Tawfik for winning the 2010 Fall AGU Outstanding Student Paper award!
  • Please join for the AOSS 605 class final presentations on Regional Scale Climate: MWF 9:30-10:30AM in SRB 2424, April 11-20.
  • Undergraduate UROP student Dori Mermelstein presents a poster at the UROP symposium titled “The impact of atmospheric aerosols on the surface energy budget.”

MARCH 2011

  • Dr. Steiner presents the departmental seminar in AOSS titled “Chemistry-climate interactions: Scale-dependent processes and the role of the biosphere.”
  • 2011 Michigan Geophysical Union (March 24): Ahmed Tawfik presents a poster titled “Understanding the ozone-land surface relationship” and Alex Bryan is the AOSS organizer.

FEBRUARY 2011

  • Dr. Steiner presents a seminar at Indiana University on recent work on ozone and climate interactions.
  • Dr. Steiner receives the AOSS Faculty Award, which is given to the department faculty member who has had a high impact accomplishment in a meritous area benefiting the College of Engineering and the department.
  • Dr. Steiner presents work on regional climate simulations of aerosols at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center AeroCenter seminar.

JANUARY 2011

  • The group is awarded a contract with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to model ozone formation in the suburban Dallas-Fort Worth area. Collaborators on the project include Rob Griffin (Rice), Barry Lefer (University of Houston), Jack Dibb (UNH) and Saewung Kim (NCAR). Graduate student Alex Bryan will be working on the project.
  • Dr. Steiner teaches a new course in the AOSS department titled Regional Scale Climate: Downscaling Techniques and Applications (course number AOSS 605.007). The course will focus on regional climate applications and include a data lab. Please contact us for more information if you are interested!

DECEMBER 2010

  • A paper led by Ben Cook at GISS and co-authored by Allison Steiner on the use of climate data for phenological modeling is published in Environmental Research Letters.
  • Group presentations at the AGU Fall Meeting include:
    • Alex Bryan, A53C-0242: Vertical profiles of HOx chemistry within a mixed hardwood forest during the 2009 CABINEX field campaign: Evaluations with a one-dimensional canopy-chemistry model
    • Ahmed Tawfik, A53C-0230. Soil moisture controls on inter-annual variability of biogenic isoprene emissions and ozone
    • Allison Steiner, A53C-0217. Scaling biogenic VOC emissions from canopy to region: One-dimensional canopy modeling and the influence of leaf temperature (Invited)
    • Allison Steiner, A34D-02. Observed suppression of ozone formation at extremely high temperatures (Invited)
    • Allison Steiner, A51G-07. Analysis of coherent structures during the 2009 CABINEX field campaign: Implications for atmospheric chemistry (with co-authors Shelley Pressley and Serena Chung from WSU, Steve Edburg from University of Idaho, and our two fantastic REU students Abraham Botros and Eric Jones)
    • other co-authored presentations include work with Kerri Pratt (Purdue, A52A-06. Contributions of Individual Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds to Secondary Organic Aerosol and Organic Nitrate Formation above a Mixed Forest) and Meredith Hastings (Brown, ED13A-0599. Networking Skills as a Career Development Practice: Lessons from the Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN))

NOVEMBER 2010

  • A new paper led by Dr. Steiner is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA about observed changes in ozone formation at extremely high temperatures. The paper is available online here.
  • Dr. Steiner presents recent work on regional climate aerosol simulations and evaluates model results against MODIS satellite data at the Michigan Space Grant Consortium Symposium.
  • Graduate students Ahmed Tawfik and Alex Bryan present recent work at the University of Michigan Engineering Graduate Symposium.

OCTOBER 2010

  • Congratulations to Ahmed Tawfik on the acceptance of his first paper in JGR Atmospheres, titled “Seasonal variations in land-atmosphere coupling strength over the United States: A soil moisture-precipitation winter feedback mechanism.” Online link to follow soon!

SEPTEMBER 2010

  • Welcome to new graduate student Melissa Zagorski! Melissa will be working on the recently funded project on the climatic role of pollen.
  • The UM proposal titled “Extreme events impacts on water quality in the Great Lakes: Prediction and management of nutrient loading in a changing climate” wins the NSF Water, Sustainability and Climate award. The AOSS team will be investigating the impact of land cover change and land-atmosphere interactions in the role of extreme preciptation events.

AUGUST 2010

  • Dr. Steiner and Alex Bryan work at UMBS on experimental leaf temperature measurements. Alex will be working on these measurements at UMBS throughout August, thanks to instrument development by MEng student Cole Heckathorn and a grant from the UM Elizabeth Caroline Crosby Research Award.
  • Dr. Steiner presents recent work on ozone-temperature relationships at the Telluride Workshop on Atmospheric Chemistry.

JULY 2010

  • Dr. Steiner attends the annual ESWN Board Planning Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin.

JUNE 2010

  • The European tour continues at the Fifth Workshop on the Theory and Use of Regional Climate models at the ICTP in Trieste, Italy. Dr. Steiner presents aerosol model evaluations based on work with postdoc Chris Owen, and Ahmed is a lecturer for the user workshop.
  • Dr. Steiner visits Alex Bryan at NCAR, who is working with Alex Guenther in the Atmospheric Chemistry Division from May-July as part of the NCAR Graduate Student Visitor Program. Alex is working on updating chemical mechanisms in our 1D chemistry-canopy code.
  • Welcome to REU student Abraham Botros from UCLA! Abraham will be working with the group on turbulence analysis for the UMBS CABINEX study.

MAY 2010

  • Dr. Steiner and Ahmed Tawfik travel to Les Diablerets, Switzerland for the 2010 Gordon Conference on Biogenic Hydrocarbons and the Atmosphere. Ahmed presents a poster titled “Soil moisture controls on the interannual variability of isoprene emissions” and Dr. Steiner is elected the 2012 vice-chair.
  • Dr. Steiner is awarded an NSF CAREER grant titled “The climatic relevance of pollen in the atmosphere.”

APRIL 2010

  • Congratulations to the group’s graduating seniors, Adam, Sydney and Jen. We’ll miss you!
  • Alex Bryan and Dr. Steiner present preliminary results from one-dimensional canopy modeling for the CABINEX project at the first CABINEX data meeting in Ann Arbor.
  • April 8: Open House for AOSS 422, Boundary Layer Meteorology. Please stop by the UMBG for a showcase of the class flux tower project!

MARCH 2010

  • Congratulations to grad student Ahmed Tawfik for winning First Place in the AOSS Poster Session at the Michigan Geophysical Union!
  • Dr. Steiner gives a departmental colloquium at the Penn State Department of Meteorology.
  • Dr. Steiner presents recent work at a seminar at Central Michigan University in the Department of Geology and Meteorology.
  • Grad student Ahmed Tawfik presents recent work on land-atmosphere coupling at the Michigan Geophysical Union (Friday, March 26 in CC Little).

FEBRUARY 2010

JANUARY 2010

  • Undergraduate Adam Davis presents his work on ozone-temperature relationships at the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta in the Student Poster session.
  • Dr. Steiner travels to Providence, RI and Brown University for an ESWN Leadership Board Meeting. Check the ESWN website for new resources soon: www.eswnonline.org

DECEMBER 2009

  • After Copenhagen, graduate student Ahmed heads off to San Francisco to present his work at the 2009 Fall American Geophysical Union Meeting. Check out his poster on the seasonal cycles of land-atmosphere coupling in Session A33A: Downscaling of Weather and Climate Posters.
  • Graduate student Ahmed Tawfik travels to Copenhagen to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference as part of the University of Michigan delegation. Check out his blog posts here!
  • Download a copy of the Fall 2009 ESWNews, an annual summary of ESWN’s activities edited by Dr. Steiner.

OCTOBER 2009

  • Dr. Steiner discusses the need for in-canopy modeling of biogenic VOC emissions and CABINEX modeling plans at the Global Emissions Inventory Activity (GEIA) meeting in Oslo, Norway.
  • Dr. Steiner participates in the National Phenological Assessment Workshop in Milwaukee, WI. Want to learn more about phenology?

SEPTEMBER 2009

  • Welcome to new Ph.D. student Alex Bryan! Alex recently completed a B.S. in Meteorology from Valparaiso University and just spent an exciting summer up at the University of Michigan Biological Station as an assistant field coordinator for the CABINEX project.
  • Buon viaggio, Ahmed! Ahmed Tawfik heads off to the ICTP in Trieste, Italy for eight weeks to work with Dr. Ashraf Zakey on the coupled chemistry-climate RegCM (RegCM-CHem).

AUGUST 2009

  • View Sydney’s presentation for the UM College of Engineering SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research Experience) program. Sydney will continue her work during her senior year in the AOSS program.
  • Dr. Steiner presents a summary of the group’s research at the Undergraduate program for the American Chemical Society. At the colloquium, Dr. Susan Solomon gave an inspiring talk to chemistry undergraduates from across the nation.
  • Welcome back to undergraduate Jen DeHart! Jen participated in the Student Airborne Research Program and had a fantastic time learning about atmospheric instrumentation – and even got to fly on the DC-8!