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Smog Blog is Back Online. Good AQI in Baltimore.

Smog Blog is back online. The last few months we have been updating hardware in order to offer, as we have done for over a decade, a daily diary of air quality in the United States. Web links to past and present products showcased in this site will be available in the next few weeks. Please stay tuned. Feel free to leave comments. Archived posts are available upon request.

The image above has the last 18 hours of lidar observations (1064 nm Lufft CHM15k) at UMBC. Clouds advected between 7:00-12:00 UTC (2:00-7:00 AM Local Time. The mixing layer height is below 1.5 km. Wave like returns at top of mixing layer in the first 12 hours of observations suggest presence of bore/gravity waves.

Aerosol Optical Depth retrievals from sun photometer measurements (AERONET) at UMBC indicate that today fine particulate matter is present within the mixing layer.

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Atmospheric Lidar Group

Research by the Atmospheric Lidar Group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) revolves around understanding atmospheric chemistry and physics in the troposphere with laser remote sensing technology. The impact of the Mid-Atlantic meteorology on air quality, wind energy, and cal/val of satellite and numerical weather prediction models is examined with the use of active (lidar, rawinsondes, and radar) and passive (sun photometer and satellite) remote sensing techniques, and surface in-situ measurements of gases and aerosols.