Air Quality and Wildfire Smoke Forecasting in the State of Utah
Pre-registration is requested.
Meet the Users is a NESDIS User Engagement Speaker Series that invites end users in society to share their thematic uses of NOAA data, products and services. This series is an opportunity to bring awareness to the opportunities, benefits, and impact NOAA data has in society.
NOAA and NESDIS Topics of Interest: Air quality monitoring, air quality hazards, and smoke forecasting
Dr. Heather Holmes will discuss air quality and smoke forecasting products in Utah as part of an National Science Foundation Civic Innovation Challenge (NSF CIVIC) funded project. Dr. Holmes’ Community Resilience through Engaging, Actionable, Timely, high-rEsolution Air Quality Information (CREATE-AQI) project aims to protect children from air quality hazards by providing air quality alerts to local decision-makers and equipping indoor air quality sensors in childcare facilities across Utah. CREATE-AQI is also developing an automated air-quality modeling system to provide three-day Air Quality Index (AQI) forecasts with an hourly time resolution on a 12-km horizontal grid.
Dr. Holmes, an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah, researches air quality, atmospheric turbulence, and exposure modeling to improve human health and public policy assessments. In 2021, Dr. Holmes and her research team collaborated with NASA to study post-wildfire smoke retention and atmospheric behavior, improving predictions of its impacts on nearby communities. To study the physics and chemistry of air pollution, Dr. Holmes utilizes a variety of data, such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) and plume injection height (PIH) and remote monitoring products, such as the Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). She has a history of collaborative research and serves on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Committee on Mountain Meteorology, State of Utah Air Quality Advisory Board, and the Health Effects Institute Research Committee. As an educator at the University of Utah, Dr. Holmes teaches courses on atmospheric modeling and air pollution and holds adjunct faculty positions in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Atmospheric Sciences.
To learn more about how Dr. Holmes and the University of Utah are utilizing remote monitoring data and overcoming environmental challenges, please contact meet.the.users@noaa.gov.