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The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science 

Atmospheric Pollution Scientists

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Daniel J. Jacob
Daniel Jacob is a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering at Harvard University. The goal of his research is to understand the chemical composition of the atmosphere, its perturbation by human activity, and the implications for climate change and life on Earth. His approaches include global modeling of atmospheric chemistry and climate, aircraft measurement campaigns, satellite data retrievals, and analyses of atmospheric observations.

 

Featured Scientists

Charles E. Kolb
Charles Kolb is the president and chief executive officer of Aerodyne Research, Inc. where his personal areas of research have included atmospheric and environmental chemistry, combustion chemistry, materials chemistry, and the chemical physics of rocket and aircraft exhaust plumes. In the area of atmospheric and environmental chemistry, Dr. Kolb initiated programs for the identification and quantification of sources and sinks of trace atmospheric gases and aerosols involved in regional and global pollution problems, as well as the development of spectral sensing techniques to quantify soil pollutants. He has also developed models of aircraft and rocket exhaust plume/wake chemical kinetics, condensation physics and dispersion processes critical to the systematic assessment of the impact of aerospace systems on the chemical structure of the upper troposphere and stratosphere. // Read interview transcript

 

Luisa T. Molina
Luisa Molina is currently the president of the Molina Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and the Environment (MCE2) in La Jolla, California and principal research scientist at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Molina’s research interests include molecular spectroscopy, chemical kinetics, and atmospheric chemistry. She has been involved in particular with the chemistry of stratospheric ozone depletion and urban air pollution. She demonstrated experimentally a new reaction sequence, which explains how chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) caused the Antarctic ozone hole. Recently she initiated a multi-disciplinary project involving an integrated assessment of air pollution in megacities, aimed at improving the environmental decision-making process through education and the better use of scientific, technical, and socio-economic understanding. // Read interview transcript

Series Directory

The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science 

Credits

Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in association with the Harvard University Center for the Environment. 2007.
  • ISBN: 1-57680-883-1

Units