by Robert Banks

As a fellow at Barcelona, I participated in the Meteorology And Climate - Modeling for Air Quality (MAC-MAQ) conference from 16-18 September in Sacramento, California, U.S.A. The conference was organized by the Air Quality Research Center at the Univ. of California, Davis and was supported by the California Air Resources Board. The MAC-MAQ conference was aimed at those involved in a wide array of research areas that utilize meteorological and climatological data. The primary focus of the conference was the modeling and prediction of regional climate and meteorology as it relates to air quality - with a special emphasis on understanding what is “under the hood” in the models and how to improve them.

On the final day of the meeting I delivered a talk titled, “Impact of WRF PBL Schemes on Boundary-Layer Simulations Using Lidar, Modelling, and Observations During Spring 2015: Towards Improvement of an Air Quality Forecast System”, which was well received. There was much interest in the UPC extended Kalman filter technique for estimating PBL height from lidar observations. In addition to the numerous talks and the Wednesday evening poster session there were many opportunities to engage in discussions about current results of the PhD topic.

For further interest on the topic, here is a link to my presentation.

While in the U.S. I also had the chance to visit NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Washington D.C. area to meet with the research team of the MicroPulse Lidar NETwork (MPLNET). Recently, the MPL in Barcelona was introduced as a new site in the MPLNET. Meetings were made with Judd Welton, P.I. of MPLNET, and Jasper Lewis, science team. Discussions revolved around testing of the Barcelona lidar and future research studies, including a PBL height project using data from the 2011 NASA DISCOVER-AQ field campaign.