Dr. Clare Flynn currently works with Professor Michael J. Prather in the Department of Earth System Science and performs research in Atmospheric Chemistry and Climatology. Their current project is the NASA Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) project. Clare completed her PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she investigated the relationship between satellite-observed column quantities and surface concentrations for the EPA criteria air pollutants ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This work supported the NASA DISCOVER-AQ (Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from COlumn and VERtically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality) mission.
Clare arrived at UCI in July 2016 and now studies the statistical distributions of important precursor species to the short-lived greenhouse gases and pollutants O3 and methane (CH4) over the remote Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins as part of the ATom mission. The particular focus of her work is using ATom measurements to understand the differences and short-comings in tropospheric chemistry as simulated by global chemistry-climate models. Though O3 and CH4 are important secondary greenhouse gases, these models produce very different projections of the future concentrations for these two gases for reasons that are currently unclear. ATom is designed to provide the statistics necessary to evaluate differences in simulated chemistry that may lead to these different projections, allowing us to correct errors in the models. In collaboration with Prof. Prather, Clare is evaluating the chemical climatologies of O3, CH4, and their important precursor species in both the measurements and models to quantify statistical differences between observed and simulated chemistry. They have also been working on identifying where in the atmosphere most of the production and loss of O3 and loss of CH4 occurs in both the measurements and models and the species most important in controlling production and loss, as another method to investigate deficiencies in the models.