At what height can I breathe right?

At what height can I breathe right?

By: Veronica Pineda

In 1952 the heart of Industrial Revolution experienced what was deemed the “Killer Smog.” Over 4,000 people suffocated in London from the terrible pollution of burning coal and releasing smoke vicariously into the air.

This was one of the gravest environmental repercussions of London’s rapid Urbanization that led to air quality regulation. But as the human population is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050 with 70 percent living in urban areas more information on how humans contribute to air quality is needed to prevent disaster like that of London.

Currently, research is being done on this at the University of Utah by graduate research assistant Lacey Holland. Her research is monitoring the effects of urbanization on air quality from over 1,000 metropolitan locations around the world.

Her observations are based on records from a weather balloon called “Radiosonds” that are sent up twice a day to assess a vertical profile of the atmosphere.

By finding out the stability in the air and how the wind changes with height, Holland can determine an average height of where the air stops being so turbulent. The boundary between this height and our surface is called the “mixing height.”


“The big question that I’m trying to answer is do people effect the mixing height and if so does it have an effect on air quality,” said Holland.

The Earth's atmosphere naturally contains “greenhouse gases” such as, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide. They make the planet suitable for life as we know it.

Trees, mountains, rivers and other natural obstructions also create turbulence in the air.

But with Urbanization, our construction and emissions have produced a new dynamic variable to air quality.

The emissions from cars, refineries, and power plants mix together and collide against our buildings reversing their direction of flow and continuing their chaotic dance through the streets and alleys.

This turbulent flow of all the pollutants around people formed a lid that restricts any of those pollutants of ventilating out into the free atmosphere.

Depending on the geographical and atmospheric variables of that city, the mixing height layer ascends and descends anywhere between 100 meters to 1,00 meters such as a balloon of condensed and transforming contaminants.

“ Whenever the mixing height is low to the ground that means that there is a higher concentration of these chemicals and pollutants,” said Holland. “And whenever it’s up high, there is a bigger volume to be spread over so the concentration aren’t so high.”

Just imagine breathing in air in which all the contaminants have been crammed into one-tenth of the space it usually inhabits. Many of the gases and particles in the air are known to have adverse effects on people’s respiratory system.

Exposure to high nitrogen dioxide levels can contribute to the development of acute or chronic bronchitis, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the EPA, in the case of the London’s “Killer Smog,” it was high concentrations of sulfur dioxide that come from fossil fuel combustion at power plant’s industrial processes such as, extracting metal from ore, and the burning of high sulfur containing fuels by locomotives, large ships, and non-road equipment, according to the EPA.

The smog gave humans and animals difficulty breathing and induced the vomiting of phlegm.

Temperature has also shown to be a major variable affecting the mixing height. The change to cooler air lowers the mixing height.

In reference to Salt Lake City, the biggest impact is going to be in the winter because the mixing height becomes so low in the valley said Holland.

The mixing height is usually at its highest during the day and at its lowest at night, she said.

According to the EPA, Urbanization has also created a “heat island effect” in which the city becomes 0-3 degrees Celsius warmer than its surroundings.

“Initially I thought mixing heights would get bigger. SO if it gets bigger that means pollutants are spread out with more volume,” Holland said.

But her observations have proven otherwise.

In Beijing, the mixing height is increasing during the day and the night. In New Delhi, the mixing height is increasing at night and decreasing during the day. Mexico City’s mixing height is slightly decreasing during the day and the night.

According to a report by The Daily Finance, these cities are considered both the most developed cities in the world and also the ones with the worst air quality.

“What I think is happening is that in some cities it can be like urban heat island stuff, but for other cities it could be depending on some pollutants that they produce,” said Holland.

Different types of particles have different impacts on climate. Black carbon warms the climate while sulfates and nitrates cool the climate, according to the EPA.

The way these gases react with sunlight and with other pollutants is still in question to how it’s affecting the mixing height. But Holland’s research is mostly observational and the data has revealed how urbanization is causing wild fluctuations in mixing height.

Holland hopes that her research will influence individual awareness of how people contribute to air quality.

“I think that the main thing that will come out of it will be the effects people have on their surroundings,” she said.

During the past 20 years, about three-quarters of human-made carbon dioxide emissions were from burning fossil fuels according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It’s the inefficient combustion from our cars, our trends in consumption, and our use of energy that is the adding to the concentration of gases in our air.

It took killer smog that only lasted four days to directly influence the implementation of the Clean Air Act.  Despite regulation efforts, similar smog 10 years later killed approximately 100 Londoners.

What will it take for each city to take sustainable initiatives as populations grow?

“It will be interesting to see as people move to a place so quickly what impact they have on environment,” said Holland. 

Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Light pollution and the planetary boundary layer over Berlin

U of U Grad Student Researches Factors in Order to Understand Climate Change

By Fiona Marcelino

Paul Staten, University of Utah atmospheric sciences graduate student.

Average global temperatures are increasing and 2000-2009 was recorded as the warmest decade worldwide.

Increases in global temperatures have researchers concerned about future climate changes and their effects on the environment.

University of Utah atmospheric sciences graduate student, Paul Staten, is studying large-scale atmospheric circulation change. His interest lies in climate changes over long periods of time and understanding why these changes happen.

Staten’s research proves to be important in understanding the processes of climate change and is critical in estimating vulnerabilities and how future climate change will impact human health, society and the environment.

“We currently have a good picture with CO2, but once you get to smaller scales, that’s what we still have to work out,” said Staten. “We can make projections, but understanding how accurate we are requires better knowledge of climate change factors.”

Staten equates his research to a room of children. One moment the room may be quiet then next, it’s full of noise. His focus is deciphering the cause of the noise be it a specific child, the addition of a new child to the room, or one child’s influence on another.

“There are so many factors involved, and when climate changes, it’s a combination of all these factors and figuring out the combination can be hard. My job is to understand why and what causes specific changes,” said Staten.

Scientists have found that changes in climate have lead to ice sheets melting, a rise in ocean levels and snow melting sooner, which could lead to more extreme weather conditions that could put entire ecosystems in danger.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s research has well established that these changes are happening and will continue to do so. The trick is to understanding what causes these changes.

“It’s important to understand the climate change processes that are responsible for all this. Then, we can look at future projections better and why global warming causes specific changes,” said Staten.

University of Utah Research Could Mean Millions of Dollars to Weather Sensitive Investments

By Javan Rivera

Ryan Oates

When people associate weather patterns with money, they almost always think of crops first.

Farmers and agriculture investors are always hedging their agrarian investments to insure against droughts, floods and more. Weather, fickle as it often is, could mean the difference between a bountiful harvest and healthy economic income, and a dead field with little more than pennies to show for a season’s worth of work.

And while these are all fine examples of the importance weather plays in economic investments, few seem to realize that there is an entire season of economic betting that takes place during the winter months.

Ryan Oates, graduate researcher at the University of Utah, is currently studying atmospheric influences on weather that can have an economic influence during the winter months.

For example, the energy that people use to heat their homes every winter isn’t free. It’s part of a multi-billion dollar industry that, much like the agricultural industry, is greatly subject to global weather patterns. The real question on all these investor’s minds isn’t why the weather changes, but rather, how far out can that weather be forecast, and what else can be done to extend that lead time?

This is one of the most important questions that could be addressed by Oates’ work.

“There’s currently a two to three week lead time between forecasting mid-latitude weather and stratospheric events,” Oates said.

What would happen if that lead time could be extended, with greater understanding of stratospheric patterns during the winter?

Oates, along with his research advisor, Thomas Reichler, are running a series of computer models in the University’s atmospheric sciences department in an attempt to understand the changes of global weather patterns as climate change begins to take affect. More specifically, Oates is studying the effects of CO2 increase on the polar vortex.

The polar vortex is a well-documented massive circulation of the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere. The circulation, which takes place in the stratosphere, directly influences winter weather in the mid-latitudes according to Oates, meaning the importance of what happens in the vortex can’t be understated for energy investors.

Oates said that due to the direct correlation between the polar vortex and global weather patterns, the vortex can not only affect tropospheric weather, but tropospheric weather can affect it as well. Any time large-scale tropospheric weather destabilizes the vortex, it can stop spinning, or even reverse as part of an event known as “Stratospheric Sudden Warming” (SSW). These SSW events can significantly change weather patterns in the mid-latitudes.

“The troposphere affects the polar vortex, but it also works the other way,” Oates said. “So when you have these sudden warming events, that impacts storm tracks. When you have a sudden warming event, that tends to push those storms farther south towards the mid-latitudes.”

Oates uses a global climate model in order to simulate advanced states of global climates containing large-scale CO2 increase in order to observe what effects that has on the polar vortex.

“Since CO2 is expected to readily increase throughout this century, what would happen to our global climate model if we doubled CO2 in it?” Oates said.

The preliminary results, according to Oates, are that an increase in greenhouse gases means an increase in SSW events.

“This means that our winters will be more variable,” Oates said. “That’s obviously important, because you will potentially have more instances where you have periods of above and below average weather.”

What does this mean for investors in energy supplies? Oates said, this research could be a significant driving force behind the “opportunity and risk” these investors face going forward.

As global climate change marches on, the significance of SSW events is likely to only increase for these investors.

This correlation between his work and real world economic consequences is something that drives Oates.

“For me, science ties into everyday things,” Oates said. “You can’t isolate it to just one thing. It always has real life implications.”

With his graduate studies coming to an end, Oates expects to graduate with a master’s degree this fall, and hopes to apply his research to the real life consequences he finds so fascinating.

“Ideally, I’d like to work with a company that deals with weather sensitive commodities,” Oates said.

In the end, regardless of where Oates ends up, his research represents a step forward in understanding and forecasting storm and weather patterns across the globe.