Patricia Cleary
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, WI·Earth & Environmental Science
On hot summer days, communities along Lake Michigan can see some of the worst ozone pollution in the region. The cause is partly meteorological: cool air flowing inland from the lake, known as a lake breeze, traps and recirculates polluted air near the shoreline.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
Engineering
- Topics
air quality
ozone
nitrogen dioxide
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Develop and integrate an uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) vertical profiler, including a nitrogen dioxide (NO2) instrument built with NOAA, to measure ozone and NO2 above the Lake Michigan shoreline.
- Compare lake breeze events that form under offshore versus onshore large-scale wind conditions and test how each affects coastal ozone and nitrogen dioxide concentrations.
- Quantify how mixing at the interfaces between distinct atmospheric layers influences near-surface ozone and NO2, combining drone profiles with surface monitoring station data.
- Build a conceptual model of how shoreline circulations evolve in time and space and shape the vertical structure of ozone and nitrogen dioxide observations.
More about the research
At night the flow reverses, carrying emissions out over the water, where ozone can build up before being pushed back on shore. This coupling between lake breezes and poor air quality has been recognized for decades, but what happens in the air above the surface — where the pollution is layered and mixed — is hard to measure with ground stations alone.
Why it matters
High ozone harms breathing and is regulated nationally, yet shoreline communities on the Great Lakes often exceed standards for reasons that current monitoring networks capture poorly. Measurements of how ozone and nitrogen dioxide are layered above the lakeshore could give regulatory agencies, air quality modelers, regulated industries and residents a better basis for understanding and forecasting these episodes. Undergraduates gain hands-on training in drone-based atmospheric measurement and field campaign work.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kevin Adkins
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure the surface energy budget and key weather variables continuously with a 30-meter flux tower in coastal Florida, to identify when sea-breeze boundaries and circulations pass the site.
John Cassano
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Collect year-round, autonomous atmospheric and surface measurements from an instrumented 30-meter tall tower at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide field camp, to track how the lowest layer of air exchanges heat with the ice.
Colleen Jones
Utah State University, UT·Earth & Environmental Science
Conduct a year-long field campaign near Salt Lake City measuring elemental and divalent mercury, related oxidants, and chemical and weather variables, using a dual-channel continuous mercury system that avoids the low bias of standard methods.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire: 2 labs on PI Pages.
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