APECS Atmospheric Science Coordinator

University of Hawaii, USA

Born in Alberta Canada, I lived in British Columbia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan before completing my BASc in Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo in May of 2000.  In August of that year, my future wife Lianne and I moved to Honolulu so that I could pursue an MS in Oceanography at the University of Hawai‘i.  While at the University of Hawai‘I, I have participated in 9 airborne field campaigns funded by NASA and the United States’, National Science Foundation.  I have logged more than 700 hours as a flight scientist while completing my MS (2003) and PhD (2008) degrees.  Lianne and I were married in 2003 and spent our 7-week honeymoon traveling through Northwestern China.  In 2005 we had our first boy, Ezekiel, and in 2009 Lianne gave birth to our second son, Jacob.  Our family enjoys surfing and camping, amateur photography, and collecting rocks and seashells.

My overall interest is the Earth’s water cycle.  More specifically, I am an atmospheric scientist studying aerosols; solid or liquid particles suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere.  Aerosols play a fundamental role in the Earth’s atmosphere, scattering and absorbing incoming solar radiation even as they participate as cloud and ice condensation nuclei.  Anthropogenic aerosols transported to the Arctic are responsible for springtime “Arctic Haze” events.  These events and airmass composition in general is the subject of a number of IPY airborne field campaigns under the aegis of POLARCAT.  One of the POLARCAT objectives that I am involved with is trying to provide global climate models with constraints for optical properties of absorbing aerosol in the Arctic atmosphere.  These absorbing aerosols contribute to atmospheric warming and can also reduce the surface albedo of permanent snow and ice, enhancing melting once they are deposited to the Earth’s surface.