If you are senior graduate student or postdoc interested in joining our group, please consider applying to
- Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Postdoctoral Fellowships
- NSF Atmospheric Science Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
Or contact Róisín with an overview of your research interests to discuss proposal ideas. There are no open positions in the group at the moment.
Research Overview
We investigate surface - atmosphere fluxes of greenhouse gases and air pollutants using field measurements, atmospheric trace gas observations and various modeling tools and the ecosystem processes driving these fluxes. Our urban work is hosted on the New York Atmospheric composition and Air Quality (NYAAQ) website. We focus on carbon (CO2 and methane) fluxes for our Arctic tundra and Boreal ecosystems. Our global approach to quantifying carbon fluxes is explained in the CarbonFOX project and more recently through collaborations with the MethaneSAT mission.
Recent News
We are delighted that Yuwei Zhao joined the group in Sept 2022 as a first year graduate student in the Columbia University Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences. She will be working on urban air quality and composition.
Our fieldwork in New York is continuing through the summer for various projects, even with some unavoidable COVID delays for the mobile lab deployment.
Dandan and Andrew are leading our summer fieldwork around the city and at the Bronx Botanical Garden and LDEO. Christine and Rebecca have joined the group as part of the LDEO Summer Research Education program and are focussing on methane from wetlands and aquatic systems in the NYC area. Felicity is joining us from Hunter College and Andy Reinmann's group and is focussing on isoprene emissions from urban vegetation. Ludda is still…
It may have taken two years but Bronte Dalton and Charlotte Kwong finally got a graduation ceremony! They were both doing senior theses in our group in spring 2020 when the pandemic shut everything down. It was great to see them back and to learn how their science careers have progressed!
Róisín, Luke and Ludda travelled to the NASA ABoVE Science Team meeting in Fairbanks, AK to present their work on arctic carbon. Ludda presented the work so far on her NASA FINESST fellowship. Luke presented his work synthesizing the methane models and observations from across the NASA ABoVE program.
Roisin and Luke joined a tour of the Permafrost Tunnel in Fox, AK. The masks were quite helpful to reduce the smell! Thawing permafrost and active microbes are quite a pungent combination.
Róisín and Andrew traveled to the NYS DEC air quality site in Pinnacles State Park near Addison, New York. It was a long day out but we met with our collaborator Prof. Lee Murray and graduate student Matt Lomen from University of Rochester. We returned Lee's instrumentation that we were comparing against our instrumentation and retrieved the instrument we had given him on loan.
We had our first visit to New York Botanical Garden, where we will be working across the summer as part of our NOAA funded project on urban biogenic carbon.
Ludda's paper on Predicting Inland Aquatic CO2 and CH4 concentrations and the Effects of Wildfires in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska using Machine Learning techniques was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles. This is part of Ludda's NASA FINESST fellowship research in collaboration with our wonderful colleagues at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Congrats Ludda!
Sarah M. Ludwig, Susan M. Natali, Paul J. Mann, John D. Schade, Robert M. Holmes, Margaret Powell, Greg Fiske, Roisin Commane, Using Machine Learning to Predict Inland Aquatic CO2 and CH4 concentrations and the Effects…
Róisín and Andrew met with colleagues Delphine Farmer (CSU) and Dylan Millet (University of Minnesota) at the tall tower in Mineola, NY. Dylan and Delphine will be using the site for their NOAA AEROMMA project in summer 2023! The tower has also hosted a Picarro G2301, operated by Earth Networks Inc, to measure CO2 and methane concentrations for many years. We've used that data in the past so it was great to see the instrument and tower in person!
Over the past few months we have had new members join the group and others moved on to new positions.
Dandan Wei joined as a postdoc on our Urban Carbon project with Andy Reinmann and John Mak funded by NOAA. Andrew Hallward-Driemeier joined as a research assistant on the Methane in NYS project with Lee Murray from Rochester funded by NYSERDA. Jamie and Garima moved on to other positions and projects over the past year.
We finally had an all in person group meeting this week with everyone there, but Roisin forgot to take a photo to mark the occasion... Oops.
Roisin and Luke's paper discussing the air quality impacts of climate mitigation policies in cities has been published in the journal Chem. It was also highlighted in their paper publication on Earth Day!
Commane, R., and Schiferl, L., D. Climate mitigation policies for cities must consider air quality impacts. Chem, 14, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2022.02.006, 2022.
