The Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research Remembering Yesterday, Understanding Today, Anticipating Tomorrow (2016) / Chapter Skim
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6 Recommended Supporting Programmatic and Infrastructure Priorities for Advancing Atmospheric Chemistry Research
6 Recommended Supporting Programmatic and Infrastructure Priorities for Advancing Atmospheric Chemistry Research
Pages 121-150
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The Committee recognizes that an important fraction of the NSF-funded research involving atmospheric chemistry research occurs through support to the National 121
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A related question is whether the resources for the field of atmospheric chemistry have also been growing. Recent trends in spending by the major atmospheric chemistry research funding agencies, including NSF, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
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. For NSF, the total number of atmospheric chemistry research projects funded, the inflation-adjusted combined 2 The funding amounts from each agency for each year available were converted into 2015 dollars using the U.S.
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) ; and funding for atmospheric chemistry research from other NSF directorates, including the Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences (Environmental Chemical Sciences program, and Division of Chemistry through the Centers for Chemical Innovation program)
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6.2 DEVELOPMENT OF TOOLS FOR ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY RESEARCH As discussed throughout this report, building toward a predictive capability for understanding the chemistry of the atmosphere requires contributions from laboratory studies, theory, field research, satellite measurements, and modeling approaches. And as described in the previous section, the current support from the federal agencies, including NSF, generally supports a balance of the various types of approaches.
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NOTE: a The "other" category includes support for workshops, conferences, symposium, summer student programs, the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) core office, plans, and costs for proposed field campaigns, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
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Laboratory studies could also benefit from implementing new techniques as they arise from other areas such as surface, materials, and pharmaceutical sciences with the long-term goal of interrogating complex systems under atmospherically relevant conditions. One example of needed techniques is that for the analysis and identification of individual organic species and their location in complex milieus such as secondary organic aerosol particles (SOA)
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From page 128... ...
The development of new instrument platforms is also important. While the use of aircraft, balloons, and blimps has provided, and will continue to provide, important atmospheric chemistry data in three dimensions, by their nature they are expensive and generally limited to planned field campaigns carried out over limited spatial and temporal regimes.
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Furthermore, there is substantial interest in developing distributed sensor networks for estimating air pollution exposure for health studies (PSA 4)
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For example, the Atmospheric Chemistry Program at NSF could work more closely with other NSF programs, such as the MRI and SBIR programs as well as the Chemistry Division in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at NSF and the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems Division in the Engineering Directorate, to ensure that atmospheric chemistry research needs are fully integrated into the priorities of these other programs. In addition, it is important that viable mechanisms be available within the Atmospheric and Geospace 130
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For this predictive capability to develop, substantial advancements are required, including (1) acquiring more observations of chemical species across temporal and spatial scales for chemical data assimilation and model evaluation, as well as taking advantage of existing datasets (see below)
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However, similar to instrument development, model development faces substantial challenges in obtaining funding. A major obstacle for the atmospheric modeling community is the disparate spatial and temporal scales of atmospheric chemistry, and the resulting difficulty in building consistent modeling tools and methodological approaches that can work together and integrate across these scales.
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Summary of Development of Tools for Atmospheric Chemistry Research The Atmospheric Chemistry Program at NSF is well positioned to lead efforts to improve the tools needed for laboratory and theory studies as well as for instrument and model development in collaboration with other directorates and programs within NSF and at other agencies. Overall, improved support for these basic tools of atmospheric chemistry research is essential for advancing the science over the next decade, and will allow the scientific community to observe, measure, and predict atmospheric chemistry processes and their interactions with other physical, biological, and human systems.
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The vision for these long-term sites is not simply to develop a network of monitoring stations, but rather to exploit research sites with core measurement capabilities and long-term knowledge about regional photochemistry, meteorology, ecosystem properties, and biosphere–atmosphere exchange processes that the atmospheric chemistry community can also use as a resource for making and interpreting new measurements. Long-term sites gain scientific value with time and provide a rich environment in which to understand changes in atmospheric chemistry driven by changing emissions, land use, climate, or other factors of societal relevance.
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Furthermore, it is often difficult to place the results from a single field project in a larger context unless it is built around longer-term observations and understanding. Supporting long-term sites and encouraging proposals for research at those sites enables regular introduction of new observational approaches, testing and inter-comparison of new measurement capabilities, and evaluation of new scientific understanding of emissions, transformation mechanisms, and deposition, without the need to develop novel infrastructure for costly field campaigns as frequently as is often done in the atmospheric chemistry community.
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With several different agencies currently supporting various kinds of long-term sites, it would be most useful if representatives from the various agencies worked in collaboration with academic researchers to determine how existing sites could be more useful to the atmospheric chemistry research community and to decide if, where, and how many new sites might be needed. An interagency panel could help prioritize the long-term sites and determine the required infrastructure, whether the sites would be centrally managed (e.g., using resources associated with NCAR)
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However, in the face of tighter budgets, taking advantage of existing datasets for new analysis may be a cost-effective way to continue to advance the atmospheric chemistry research agenda. Funding is required for researchers to perform analysis on collected datasets and for collaborations that take knowledge from the lab or field into model applications.
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Critical information, including expert interpretation and data quality aspects, are often not documented sufficiently. Model simulation outputs of importance for atmospheric chemistry research are often not archived or available to the general community.
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NSF already engages in data management efforts. Federally funded research through NSF does require data management plans, but no central coordinated data archive and sharing system exists to serve as a repository and resource for the atmospheric chemistry community and other users who need data for related societally relevant work.
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should establish a data archiving system for NSF-supported atmospheric chemistry research and take the lead in coordinating with other federal and possibly state agencies to create a comprehensive, compatible, and accessible data archive system. 6.4 IMPERATIVE FOR COLLABORATIONS The scope of problems in atmospheric chemistry that need to be addressed is broad, from those that are suitable for study by a single PI to those that require a much larger breadth and depth of expertise than a single PI or single community has.
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Examples are scales of modeling from process-level to global-level, or connection of laboratory, theory, field, and model studies. NSF sponsors a broad range of research, including social and behavioral studies that provide potential partnerships with the atmospheric chemistry research community to address environmental degradation and human impacts on community scales.
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The Committee further encourages NSF's Atmospheric Chemistry Program to help lead these interdisciplinary efforts to address 10 Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/ nsf16524/nsf16524.htm.
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Closer connections of the atmospheric chemistry community with the epidemiology and toxicology communities could allow for enhanced progress. Examples of previous interdisciplinary work in this area show the enormous potential for progress.
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The international atmospheric chemistry community is strong and committed to developing a global understanding of atmospheric chemistry and its impacts on human activities. This has become increasingly essential as the importance of long-range transport is becoming evident.
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atmospheric chemistry community, and specifically promoting collaboration with atmospheric chemists in developing nations. As IGBP ends, a major new international research effort, Future Earth, has been developed that focuses on the development of a sustainable world, with three major themes: Dynamic Planet, Global Sustainable Development, and Transformations toward Sustainability.
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12 and its Integrated Global Atmospheric Chemistry Observations (IGACO) strategy under the World Meteorological Organization.
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scientists involved in atmospheric chemistry research to engage with underserved groups, in capacitybuilding activities, and in international collaborations. 6.5 ROLE OF A NATIONAL CENTER The scope of the scientific problems facing atmospheric chemistry and the rest of atmospheric science are broad.
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In this ideal center, service and science leadership are tightly connected. Rewarding staff scientists for their service to the atmospheric science community as much as their scientific and technical excellence provides visible recognition of that connection.
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Nevertheless, the Committee believes that NCAR can be an even stronger partner with the atmospheric chemistry community by continuing to move its strategic vision closer to the Committee's vision of the roles of a national center given above and the original founding charter of NCAR. Some steps have been made within NCAR and ACOM in this direction, but in order to be the partner that the atmospheric chemistry community needs, NCAR must find its unique role in atmospheric chemistry research, one that complements and enhances the research being conducted by the broader atmospheric chemistry community and engages individual PIs from universities, federal labs, and the private sector.
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, should develop and implement a strategy to make NCAR a vibrant and complementary partner within the atmospheric chemistry community. This strategy should ensure that scientific leadership at NCAR has the latitude to set an energizing vision with appropriate personnel, infrastructure, and allocation of resources; and that the research capabilities and facilities at NCAR serve a unique and essential role to the NSF atmospheric chemistry community.
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