MISSOULA, Mont. — A graduate of the Ph.D. Chemistry program at the University of Montana recently published an article in Science Advances.
Lixu Jin’s article is in one of the top research journals in his field.
His article gives new insights into how wildfire smoke plumes change over time to affect air quality and human health.
Officials say Dr. Jin and his collaborators identified knowledge gaps used by scientists to model the harmful component in smoke and outlined steps needed to improve those models.
“When I see news about wildfires, I immediately think about what that smoke means for the air people are breathing – not just near the fire but in communities downwind,” Jin said. “That makes the science feel very real and urgent. And it excites me to use chemistry and measurements to better understand what’s in smoke, how it changes and how it affects air quality and health.”
Biomass burning impacts air quality and climate globally.
Ozone is a key air toxin and greenhouse gas which is closely connected to the chemistry of other air pollutants.
Aircraft monitoring offered new, highly constrained insights into how emissions from biomass burning evolve chemically at the plume scale.
This created an important opportunity to bring this detailed understanding into larger scale models.
Jin and his team studied data collected from five wildfire plumes sampled during three aircraft campaigns.
Officials say the planes flew through plumes several times and sampled the smoke as it changed.
The researched looked at the first five hours of the chemical evolution of the smoke along with five U.S. states with multiple fuel types and plume sizes.
Atomospheric chemist use chemical mechanisms within models to understand reactive substances that are a major role in the chemistry of biomass burning plumes.
Jin and his partners believe their work would show gaps in the models and be an important step towards illuminating the role of biomass in the Earth’s climate system.
“These findings are poised to meaningfully influence both the atmospheric chemistry and Earth-system modeling research communities,” said Lu Hu, a UM chemistry and biochemistry researcher who served as one of Jin’s mentors.
Jin started at UM in 2019 after earning a bachelor’s degree with honors in meteorology, atmospheric sciences from Lanzhou University in China.
After moving to Missoula he was intrigued with the challenge of understanding how smoke changes after it leaves the fire and starts reacting in sunlight.
“Honestly, UM first got my attention because of Montana’s image in pop culture – ‘A River Runs Through It’ and later the series ‘Yellowstone,’” Jin said. “On the academic side, UM was also a perfect fit for my research interests in wildfires and smoke, and I was especially excited to work with experts like Lu Hu and Bob Yokelson.”
Jin grew up in Hangzhou, China and wanted a change from a major metropolitan area.
His article in Science Advances is titles “Ozone photochemistry is fresh biomass burning smoke over the United States.”
Dr. Jin is now a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University and will use satellite observations to study wildfire smoke and air pollution.