News

AirUCI faculty Annmarie Carlton, currently serving a year in the White House as a Revelle Fellow, was the guest on the November 29th UCI Podcast which was recorded before her departure to Washington D.C.  Annmarie discusses her research and background, airborne particles, climate change, and the challenges of science influencing policy at both small and large scales.  Hear the podcast

An article written by AirUCI faculty Jun Wu describes the variety of health risks exacerbated by climate change and associated environmental justice issues.  Extreme heat, more frequent and extreme weather events, and rising sea levels all combine to degrade air and water quality, threaten food supplies, and displace millions of people.  Along with AirUCI research specialist Shahir Masri in her group, Jun studied the effects of wildfires on different populations and further found that elderly and low-income residents suffered a disproportionate share of the fires’ impacts.  Read the article

AirUCI co-Director Barbara Finlayson-Pitts is profiled in an article describing how her research group is working to understand how air pollution evolves in the atmosphere.  One project studies how sulfur-containing pollutants — generated by both man-made and biological processes — contribute to the formation of smog, then go on to generate secondary compounds in our air.  Read the article 

AirUCI faculty Steve Davis was interviewed for WSJM radio about his recent study investigating the costs of wildfires that was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.  His team found the cost of the 2018 wildfire season to have totaled about $150 billion in losses, amounting to .7 percent of the gross domestic product of the U.S.  As Steve said, “If we continue to have these kinds of wildfire seasons, the costs are going to maintain themselves.”  Read the story