Ryan Khoury, a senior undergraduate student in UCR Environmental Science, has been awarded the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting General Student Travel Grant. In December 2018, Ryan will present his research project that is performed under the supervision of Assistant Professor King-Fai Li during the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.
Ryan has been studying the diurnal cycle of stratospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is an important ozone-destroying catalyst in the lower stratosphere (20-30 km). Due to its low abundance in the atmosphere, measurements of the stratospheric NO2 abundance is challenging and our knowledge about the stratospheric NO2 has not been tested rigorously against observations. Ryan compares the diurnal variability of NO2 observed from the NOAA ground network and satellite measurements with the diurnal variability simulated in a 1-D photochemical model. His goal is to improve our understanding of the chemical processes that govern the diurnal variability of stratospheric NO2.
This work is a collaboration with Dr. Shuhui Wang, a research scientist at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering.