scholarly journals Characterization of atmospheric aerosol in the US Southeast from ground- and space-based measurements over the past decade

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 7559-7595
Author(s):  
E. J. Alston ◽  
I. N. Sokolik ◽  
O. V. Kalashnikova

Abstract. This study examines how aerosols measured from the ground and space over the US Southeast change temporally over a regional scale during the past decade. PM2.5 data consist of two datasets that represent the measurements that are used for regulatory purposes by the US EPA and continuous measurements used for quickly disseminating air quality information. AOD data comes from three NASA sensors: the MODIS sensors onboard Terra and Aqua satellites and the MISR sensor onboard the Terra satellite. We analyze all available data over the state of Georgia from 2000–2009 of both types of aerosol data. The analysis reveals that during the summer the large metropolitan area of Atlanta has average PM2.5 concentrations that are 50% more than the remainder of the state. Strong seasonality is detected in both the AOD and PM2.5 datasets; as evidenced by a threefold increase of AOD from mean winter values to mean summer values, and the increase in PM2.5 concentrations is almost twofold from over the same period. Additionally, there is good agreement between MODIS and MISR onboard the Terra satellite during the spring and summer having correlation coefficients of 0.64 and 0.71, respectively. Monthly anomalies were used to determine the presence of a trend in all considered aerosol datasets. We found negative linear trends in both the monthly AOD anomalies from MODIS onboard Terra and the PM2.5 datasets, which are statistically significant for α = 0.05. Decreasing trends were also found for MISR onboard Terra and MODIS onboard Aqua, but those trends were not statistically significant.

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 1667-1682 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Alston ◽  
I. N. Sokolik ◽  
O. V. Kalashnikova

Abstract. This study examines how aerosols measured from the ground and space over the US Southeast change temporally over a regional scale during the past decade. PM2.5 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter >2.5 micrometers) data consist of two datasets that represent the measurements that are used for regulatory purposes by the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and continuous measurements used for quickly disseminating air quality information. AOD (aerosol optical depth) data come from three NASA sensors: the MODIS sensors onboard Terra and Aqua satellites and the MISR sensor onboard the Terra satellite. We analyze all available data over the state of Georgia from 2000–2009 of both types of aerosol data. The analysis reveals that during the summer the large metropolitan area of Atlanta has average PM2.5 concentrations that are 50% more than the remainder of the state. Strong seasonality is detected in both the AOD and PM2.5 datasets, as evidenced by a threefold increase of AOD from mean winter values to mean summer values, and the increase in PM2.5 concentrations is almost twofold over the same period. Additionally, there is agreement between MODIS and MISR onboard the Terra satellite during the spring and summer, having correlation coefficients of 0.64 and 0.71, respectively. Monthly anomalies were used to determine the presence of a trend in all considered aerosol datasets. We found negative linear trends for both the monthly AOD anomalies from MODIS onboard Terra and the PM2.5 datasets, which are statistically significant. Decreasing trends were also found for MISR onboard Terra and MODIS onboard Aqua, but those trends were not statistically significant. The observed decrease in AOD and PM2.5 concentrations may be indicative of the brightening over the study region during the past decade.


Author(s):  
Rickie Solinger

What is the state of population growth in the United States today, and how is it affected by immigration? According to the 2010 census, the US population has grown 9.7 percent (adding about 27 million people, including about 13 million immigrants) during the past...


Author(s):  
Jason Welsh ◽  
Jack Fishman

We use a regional scale photochemical transport model to investigate the surface concentrations and column integrated amounts of ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) during a pollution event that occurred in the St. Louis metropolitan region in 2012. These trace gases will be two of the primary constituents that will be measured by TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution), an instrument on a geostationary platform, which will result in a dataset that has hourly temporal resolution during the daytime and ~4 km spatial resolution. Although air quality managers are most concerned with surface concentrations, satellite measurements provide a quantity that reflects a column amount, which may or may not be directly relatable to what is measured at the surface. Our model results provide reasonably good agreement with observed surface O3 concentrations (correlation coefficients ranging from 0.69 to 0.87 at each of the nine monitoring stations in the St. Louis region), which is the only trace gas dataset that can be used for verification. The model shows that a plume of O3 extends downwind from St. Louis and contains an integrated amount of ozone of ~ 16 Dobson Units (DU; 1 DU = 2.69 x 1016 molecules cm-2), an amount lower than what was observed during two massive pollution episodes in the 1980s. Based on the smaller isolatable emissions coming from St. Louis, this quantity is not unreasonable, but may also reflect the reduction of photochemical ozone production due to the implementation of emission controls that have gone into effect since the 1980s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-437
Author(s):  
Siddharth Chandra ◽  
Julia Christensen ◽  
Madhur Chandra ◽  
Nigel Paneth

The global influenza pandemic that emerged in 1918 has become the event of reference for a broad spectrum of policymakers seeking to learn from the past. This article sheds light on multiple waves of excess mortality that occurred in the US state of Michigan at the time with insights into how epidemics might evolve and propagate across space and time. We analyzed original monthly data on all-cause deaths by county for the 83 counties of Michigan and interpreted the results in the context of what is known about the pandemic. Counties in Michigan experienced up to four waves of excess mortality over a span of two years, including a severe one in early 1920. Some counties experienced two waves in late 1918 while others had only one. The 1920 wave propagated across the state in a different manner than the fall and winter 1918 waves. The twin waves in late 1918 were likely related to the timing of the statewide imposition of a three-week social distancing order. Michigan’s experience holds sobering lessons for those who wish to understand how immunologically naïve populations encounter novel viral pathogens.


2005 ◽  
pp. 22-39
Author(s):  
T. Hazyr-Ogly

Islam is now professed by the population of many countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe. According to the World Islamic League, as of 2004, there were 1.2 billion Islamic followers in different countries (around 120 countries). In 35 countries, Muslims now make up 95-99 percent of the population, in 17 countries Islam is the state religion, and in 25 states, Muslims are an influential minority. Muslim communities are overwhelmed in Asia and North Africa. But they are also present in Europe, the US and Japan. According to statistics from the European Monitoring Center and Xenophobia (EUMC), Islam is the only religious religion in the world over the past 100 years, from 13 to 19.5 percent.


2002 ◽  
Vol 757 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Jerden ◽  
A. K. Sinha

ABSTRACTThe unmined Coles Hill U deposit in the Virginia Piedmont represents a unique natural laboratory for studying the long-term containment of U by phosphate minerals. The primary ore assemblage consists of coffinite and apatite and is hosted in foliated granite. Geochemical and mineralogical studies of the weathered bedrock and soils developed over the primary ore body indicate that U transport is inhibited by the precipitation of meta-autunite group minerals. The lower part of the profile, which consists of ground water saturated saprolite, contains 1400 mg/kg U (in the solid). This concentration is 1.5 times greater than the mean ore grade of the deposit, indicating that the saprolites are enriched in U relative to the underlying primary ore. Uranium within the saprolite is dominantly associated with 10 to 500 μm long, tabular crystals of (Ba, Ca, Sr) meta-autunite. Ground waters from this zone contain less than 14 μg/L dissolved U suggesting that the U(VI) phosphate minerals present are capable of controlling dissolved U concentrations at values lower than the US-EPA maximum contaminant level (30 μg/L). Mineralogical characterization of the unsaturated soil horizons indicate that geochemical conditions in these zones are not conducive to U stabilization by meta-autunite mineralization. In the vadose zone U is primarily associated with Al phosphate (crandallite) and with P adsorbed or coprecipitated with iron oxide mineral coatings. Geochemical gradients suggest that significant amounts of U have been leached from the vadose zone by infiltrating fluids and reprecipitated below the water table, where the activity ratio of dissolved phosphate to carbonate increases. Based on regional weathering rates, the processes responsible for stabilization of U within the Coles Hill system are estimated to have been active for hundreds of thousands of years.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 965
Author(s):  
Valérie Leroy-Cancellieri ◽  
Dominique Cancellieri ◽  
Eric Leoni

Climate change causes more frequent and destructive wildfires even transforming them into megafire. Moreover, all biomass fires produce emissions of carbon compounds in the form of soot to the atmosphere with a significant impact on the environment and human health. Indeed, the soot is causing the formation of PAHs from (a) the high temperature thermal alteration of natural product precursors in the source organic matter and (b) the recombination of molecular fragments in the smoke. However, these molecules are known to have carcinogenic effects on human health. It is therefore interesting to quantify the 16 PAHs concentration extracted from soot emitted in open diffusion flame of biomass combustion. To achieve this objective, an analytical method developed for the study of kerosene combustion has been adapted for soot from biomass. This new method allowed to quantify the 16 PAHs defined as priority pollutants by the US EPA for their carcinogenic mutagenic effect and on human health.


1970 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-64
Author(s):  
AJIT GOPALAKRISHNAN

The mandates of the US National Reporting System (NRS)accountability framework presented adult education at the state and locallevels with a quantitative, outcomes-based, mandatory system. In the earlyyears of the NRS, researchers explored the challenges of implementing largescaleaccountability systems and documented its early impact. With thecontinued implementation of the NRS over the past four to five years, thispaper takes a fresh look at the impact of those accountability requirementswith particular reference to implementation by the Connecticut StateDepartment of Education (CSDE). It presents some positive developmentswith respect to curriculum, instruction, and the use of data, while highlightingsome of the shortcomings within the NRS approaches. It discusses theorganisational implications for local programs, presents strategies for stateagencies, and offers suggestions for improving the NRS.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Besteman

The past several decades of US intervention in Somalia produced violent destabilization, dysfunction, and uncertainty, creating refugee outflows and terrorist networks against which the US is currently tightening its security cordons. This paper argues that Somalia’s recent history as a stateless region offers a cautionary and tragic case study of the long-term damages that ensue when wealthy states that intervene in poorer states in the name of their own security instead cause insecurity and inequities that enable violence, and then in response to that violence enact further securitization to protect themselves against the consequences of that damage. But rather than focusing on the state as a site of securitization, I focus on those whose lives are made insecure by the retreat of their state government and the imposition in its place of security regimes that are not created by their own state government. Such security regimes overlap and compete, are instituted by different state and nonstate actors for different purposes, and by their incoherence and multiplicity raise questions about the definition, location, and relevance of the state in such regions. The paper explores the emergence of new, interlinked security regimes that are partially or wholly constituted through the logics of a new security empire designed to respond to US security concerns. By turning attention to the situations faced by those who live within the insecurities of stateless regions, the paper asks, what happens to the concept of securitization when the national-territorial state is not the entity that operates as a ‘state’ in the lives of people, even though their lives are overlain with multiple and overlapping regimes of securitization?


2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Lee Dawdy

A new sub-field in the archaeology of race has been emerging among historical archaeologists based in the US and South Africa. A review of this literature, put into play with some thoughts from Ralph Ellison and Franz Fanon, provides several ‘object lessons’ about the state of archaeological theory and practice, and the difficulties inherent in framing a material study of race. The literature exemplifies how archaeology is fast becoming an anachronistic critique of modernity that may hinder our ability to see difference in the past. At the same time, a brave new project of comparison might position us to contribute a unique perspective on the spiral of history.


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