Birmingham, United Kingdom

Atmospheric Sciences and Air Pollution

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
University website: www.birmingham.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Air Pollution
Air pollution occurs when harmful or excessive quantities of substances including gases, particulates, and biological molecules are introduced into Earth's atmosphere. It may cause diseases, allergies and also death of humans; it may also cause harm to other living organisms such as animals and food crops, and may damage the natural or built environment. Human activity and natural processes can both generate air pollution.
Atmospheric Sciences
Atmospheric sciences is the study of the Earth's atmosphere, its processes, the effects other systems have on the atmosphere, and the effects of the atmosphere on these other systems. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climatology is the study of atmospheric changes (both long and short-term) that define average climates and their change over time, due to both natural and anthropogenic climate variability. Aeronomy is the study of the upper layers of the atmosphere, where dissociation and ionization are important. Atmospheric science has been extended to the field of planetary science and the study of the atmospheres of the planets of the solar system.
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution. In 2015, pollution killed 9 million people in the world.
Air
Hamlet: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Horatio: It is a nipping and an eager air.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i, scene 4.
Air
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (1911).
Pollution
Net-based surveys are less subjective than direct observations but are limited regarding the area that can be sampled (net apertures 1–2 m and ships typically have to slow down to deploy nets, requiring dedicated ship's time). The plastic debris sampled is determined by net mesh size, with similar mesh sizes required to make meaningful comparisons among studies. Floating debris typically is sampled with a neuston or manta trawl net lined with 0.33 mm mesh. Given the very high level of spatial clumping in marine litter, large numbers of net tows are required to adequately characterize the average abundance of litter at sea. Long-term changes in plastic meso-litter have been reported using surface net tows: in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in 1999, plastic abundance was 335 000 items/km2 and 5.1 kg/km2, roughly an order of magnitude greater than samples collected in the 1980s. Similar dramatic increases in plastic debris have been reported off Japan. However, caution is needed in interpreting such findings, because of the problems of extreme spatial heterogeneity, and the need to compare samples from equivalent water masses, which is to say that, if an examination of the same parcel of water a week apart is conducted, an order of magnitude change in plastic concentration could be observed.
Ryan, P. G.; Moore, C. J.; Van Franeker, J. A.; Moloney, C. L. (2009). "Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 364 (1526): 1999–2012. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0207. JSTOR 40485978. PMC 2873010 Freely accessible. PMID 19528052.
An EU team is developing an air quality monitoring hardware system for public use. After developing case studies for numerous European cities, the team designed, then built and tested sensor and communication modules, including software.
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