The University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Atmospheric Lidar Group Description:

We are interested in remote sensing of the atmosphere with a focus on aerosols and aerosol properties. We have a number of Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) Facilities that allow us to make active measurements of the aerosols in the atmosphere. We have a surface based instruments to measure light scattering and particulate mass. We also utilize passive instruments on satellites to look at the regional variability and development of aerosols.

  Projects:

US Air Quality

• The USAQ Smog Blog is a daily diary of U.S air quality. We use information from satellites, ground-based lidar, EPA monitoring networks, and other monitors to provide evidence of air quality events across the U.S. The Smog Blog has postings 365 days a year.

DISCOVER-AQ

• The DISCOVER-AQ mission (NASA website) is a venture-class project involving three NASA laboratories and numerous co-investigators. UMBC particpates with ground-based monitoring from UMAP and provides quicklook data in real-time for project flight following on this page.

UMAP

• The UMBC Monitoring of Atmospheric Particulates (UMAP) project maintains a supersite of remote sensing instrumentation on the Physics Building of the UMBC campus.

MDE Low Level Jet Profiling Project

• We are funded by the Maryland Department of Environment to profile nocturnal jet events in the Baltimore region with a view to assessing potential for poor air quality on following days.

3D-AQS

• The 3D Air Quality System (3D-AQS) was a recently completed project that integrated satellite and remote sensing resources into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Remote Sensing Information Gateway (RSIG) system.

Current Baltimore Webcam Image

Current Group Members (email use umbc.edu after the usernames):