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Upcoming Seminars
| Title: | Advances in detecting trace-level pollutant enhancements within biomass burning plumes at mountaintop observatories
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| Speaker: |
Dr. Lynne Gratz
Lynne Gratz is a Professor of Chemistry and Environmental Studies at Reed College in Portland, OR. She received her PhD in Atmospheric Science from the University of Michigan in 2010. She held post-doctoral research positions at the CNR-IIA in Rende, Italy from 2010-12 and at the University of Washington-Bothell from 2012-15, and was a professor of Environmental Studies at Colorado College from 2015-23. At Reed, Lynne is building an active undergraduate research program with a core emphasis on observations from the Mount Bachelor Observatory. Her expertise is in field and laboratory measurements of trace gases and other environmental toxins.
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| Date/Time: |
Thursday, July 9, 2026 01:00 PM MDT (-0600)
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| Location: |
David Skaggs Research Center, Room GC402
Google Meet |
Abstract
Wildland fire behavior is changing due to both climatic and human factors. Fire frequency and severity may affect elemental biogeochemical cycles, while the smoke generated by fires can also degrade air quality. These wide-ranging impacts can be challenging to disentangle from other natural and anthropogenic drivers of pollutant variability. High elevation field measurements offer unique opportunities to sample smoke composition with minimal influence from other pollution sources. This seminar will include recent measurements from two established mountaintop research stations in the western U.S. – Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL) and Mount Bachelor Observatory (MBO) – that are increasingly experiencing the influence of wildfire smoke on their continuous observations. First, a 2021 study at SPL that enabled analytical advances in ambient mercury (Hg) measurements in continental background air also encompassed an active smoke year in the western U.S. Elemental Hg was co-enhanced with carbon monoxide (CO) and fine (PM1) aerosol scattering in nearly all of the 16 identified smoke events, regardless of smoke origin. Meanwhile, oxidized Hg was also detectably enhanced in approximately half of these events, most notably within smoke from two local (< 25 km) fires. These results are impactful considering the relatively scarcity of Hg measurements reported in smoke, which is due to both the challenges of opportunistic sampling of fire events and the analytical limitations of accurately quantifying ambient Hg. More recently, the continuation of trace gas and aerosol optical measurements at MBO has enabled exploration of a nearly 20-year record of smoke days and associated behavior of background ozone (O3). Wildfire smoke enhances the maximum daily 8-hour average O3 at surface sites, but O3 behavior within smoke in the background atmosphere is more varied. In measurements taken during summers 2024 and 2025 at MBO, 25% of smoke events displayed O3 enhancements that were significantly correlated with enhanced CO. Using the multi-year record, which contains more than 100 smoke days, we are robustly characterizing temporal O3 patterns and re-examining enhancements that may have occurred without significant correlation to CO. Taken together, these studies from SPL and MBO exemplify the nuances of defining smoke events using trace-level atmospheric field measurements, as well as the unique value of both short-term campaign-based and long-term sustained measurements from mountaintop observatories to advance the understanding of wildfire smoke composition.
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