"Using Physics to Measure Atmospheric Composition"

Prof. Kimberly Strong (strong@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca)

NSERC Summer 2009 Student Positions

The Atmospheric Physics group at the University of Toronto has a very active program in remote sounding of the atmosphere from ground-based, balloon, and satellite platforms, along with supporting radiative transfer studies and laboratory spectroscopy. Our research deals with such topics as stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric pollution, and climate change. Understanding of the physical and chemical processes underlying these issues requires accurate and timely observations of atmospheric composition. My research group is involved in a wide variety of projects that use UV-visible and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers to measure the concentrations of atmospheric trace gases. We are looking for summer students for several current projects:

• Daily measurements with an FTIR spectrometer at the University of Toronto Atmospheric Observatory (TAO), where we are studying mid-latitude stratospheric ozone chemistry and chemical cycles in the troposphere, and contributing to the validation of satellite-based atmospheric measurements.
• Studies of Arctic atmospheric chemistry using three instruments recently installed in the new Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) at Eureka, Nunavut. We have two projects available on this theme:

1. Ten years of ozone and NO2 measurements at Eureka: analyzing a time series of tests and measurements with a UV-visible spectrometer
2. Investigation of retrievals of water vapour using the FTIR spectrometer at Eureka

If any of these projects are of interest to you, please feel free to contact me for details. Applicants should have have completed second year or higher, have an interest in experimental research, and have some experience with computers and programming. The successful applicant will join my group in May 2009, and will likely be involved in one or more of the following: operation of spectrometer systems, data acquisition, and the analysis of results (using software to retrieve concentrations of atmospheric gases from the measured spectra).

More information can be found on the following WWW pages:

Kimberly Strong's Home Page
Atmospheric Physics Group
Department of Physics
NSERC Summer Student Program in Physics at Toronto
University of Toronto