As wildfires and dust storms in a changing climate create health challenges for people worldwide, NOAA has announced funding for a University of Colorado Boulder-led project that promises to help improve air quality monitoring and forecasting.
Currently, global observations of aerosols—tiny airborne particles which can cause health problems—are sparse, leading to uncertainties in climate models. The new project aims to produce a better global map of aerosols and improve NOAA’s aerosol monitoring and forecasts.
“Aerosols are also critical to the Earth’s radiative balance and clouds, thus having a major impact on weather and climate,” said Mariusz Pagowski, a CIRES scientist who studies aerosols at NOAA’s Global Systems Division.
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