Professor Delphine Farmer

Professor Delphine Farmer
Department of Chemistry
Colorado State
Abstract

Wildfire smoke: Tracking an atmospheric villain through air, leaves, and homes

Wildfires have become more frequent, causing extreme air pollution events across the United States. Wildfires release both particulate matter and gaseous material, which interconvert and chemically transform as the smoke plume moves through the atmosphere. While recent work has focused on improving our understanding of wildfire emissions, we have focused on the subsequent chemistry in the air – and the consequent effects on ecosystems and human health. In this talk, we will trace wildfire smoke following emission, deposition to different surfaces, uptake by plants, and infiltration by homes – and subsequent release. Each of these aspects has been the focus of a different field project, including the 2018 WE-CAN aircraft study in the Western United States, the 2017-2021 Black Carbon and Aerosol Deposition Studies in the low Arctic and Oklahoma grasslands, the 2021 Fluxes of Carbon Study in Colorado, and the 2022 Chemical Assessment of Surfaces and Air (CASA) indoor chemistry study. This work will highlight how the evolution of smoke plumes in the atmosphere can impact the ultimate fate of different components of wildfire smoke, and the potential persistence of smoke volatiles on both ecosystem and indoor surfaces.

Delphine Farmer

Delphine Farmer is a Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University, where she runs a research group studying atmospheric and indoor chemistry, with particular focus on using mass spectrometry to study processes that control sources and sinks of organic gases and particles in the atmosphere. She received her BSc in Chemistry from McGill University, her MS in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California at Berkeley, and then her PhD in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. She held a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado Boulder before moving to her current position at CSU in Fort Collins. She is a recipient of the 2013 Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award and the 2022 AGU Ascent Award.

Hosted by Emily Robinson (Buhlmann Group)