Dr. Delphine Farmer from Colorado State University in Fort Collins speaks to SoMAS at the Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences seminar on Wednesday November 29, 2023 on the topic "Wildfire smoke: Tracking an atmospheric villain through air, leaves, and homes".

Delphine conducts research in both indoor air quality and outdoor atmospheric chemistry. Delphine specializes in measurement of aerosol composition and chemistry. She has participated in numerous airborne field campaigns and is a principal investigator in an upcoming aircraft project in the New York region (GOTHAAM).

Wildfires have become more frequent, causing extreme air pollution events across the United States. Wildfires release both particulate matter and gaseous material, which interconvert and chemically transform as the smoke plume moves through the atmosphere. While recent work has focused on improving our understanding of wildfire emissions, we have focused on the subsequent chemistry in the air – and the consequent effects on ecosystems and human health. In this talk, we will trace wildfire smoke following emission, deposition to different surfaces, uptake by plants, and infiltration by homes – and subsequent release. Each of these aspects has been the focus of a different field project, including the 2018 WE-CAN aircraft study in the Western United States, the 2017-2021 Black Carbon and Aerosol Deposition Studies in the low Arctic and Oklahoma grasslands, the 2021 Fluxes of Carbon Study in Colorado, and the 2022 Chemical Assessment of Surfaces and Air (CASA) indoor chemistry study. This work will highlight how the evolution of smoke plumes in the atmosphere can impact the ultimate fate of different components of wildfire smoke, and the potential persistence of smoke volatiles on both ecosystem and indoor surfaces.

For more information about the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, please visit https://somas.stonybrook.edu