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Huiting Mao to Join ESF Chemistry Department
Dr. Huiting Mao, whose research interests focus on understanding controls on the distribution of trace gases in the Earth's troposphere, will join the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry faculty in the fall.
Her research interests include regional tropospheric chemistry and climate change, intercontinental transport of trace gases and aerosols, climate-air quality connections, biosphere-atmosphere exchange of trace gases, and radiative transfer processes. Her work on these topics has appeared in more than 40 publications in high-impact journals.
She has published papers on regional O3 and CO in the Northeast, biogenic and anthropogenic contributions to methanol and acetone in marine and terrestrial environments, continental outflow of O3 using measurement aboard the Smart Balloon platform, factors important to gas-phase elemental mercury (Hg') levels in the marine and terrestrial regions of eastern New England as well as on the global scale, causes for occurrence of atmospheric mercury depletion events in the springtime Arctic, and present and future climate and air quality. She has also been co-author on other high profile papers that covered topics such as discovering a large terrestrial source of methyl iodide, controls on the diurnal cycle of O3 and other trace gases in New England, and several publications on the distribution of hydrocarbons and halocarbons along coastal New England.
Much of this work has been supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration-funded Atmospheric Investigation Regional Modeling Analysis and Prediction (AIRMAP) and Targeted Wind Sensing programs. Mao is co-principal investigator of these programs and helps lead the AIRMAP team in the investigation of regional atmospheric chemistry, dynamics, and climate change in New England. In collaboration with NOAA, AIRMAP conducted the New England Air Quality Study in 2002 and the international follow-up study, the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transportation (ICARTT) 2004, which involved hundreds of scientists and 13 research platforms from NOAA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department of Energy, and several European partners. The Targeted Wind Sensing program conducted the first transatlantic flight with a low-level balloon drifting in air masses from one continent to another and continuously measuring O3 and meteorological conditions.
Mao is the principal investigator of a collaborative study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "A Coupled Measurement-Modeling Approach to Improve Biogenic Emission Estimates: Application to Future Air Quality Assessments," in which extensive field measurements were conducted in Duke Forest with associated data analysis and modeling studies. The overall purpose was to investigate the impact of changing ambient CO2 and biogenic emissions on present and future air quality near the end of this century.