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I am currently running the
HSRL-2 instrument onboard the G

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III during the Asia AQ field
campaign.

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We are here in Asia to study air
quality and air pollution. There

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are a lot of major cities in
Asia, there's a lot of people

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living in Asia, and there's a
lot of factors that can control

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whether the air quality is good
or bad. And so we're here to try

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to understand what those factors
are and how we can make the air

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quality even better.

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It's been said that bad air
quality anywhere is bad air

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quality everywhere. The air
doesn't care if there's a

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country border or a state
border, it does whatever it

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wants, and it moves however it
wants dictated by weather and by

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meteorology. And I think that's
what makes Asia AQ so cool and

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so interesting is that it truly
is an international

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collaboration. It's not just the
United States. It's not just

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NASA, it's also these other
agencies and other countries

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that are all working together
towards the same goal, to try to

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clean up air quality around the
world.

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Air quality is a problem around
the world, especially in large

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cities in the U.S. you think New
York, LA, Chicago. In Asia, we

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think  Seoul, Kuala Lumpur,
Bangkok. In North America, we

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have a satellite called TEMPO
that looks continuously— that

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satellite is doing its job. But
there's also a satellite over

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Asia called GEMS. GEMS is
looking at Korea, Japan, China,

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Philippines, Thailand, India,
Indonesia, Malaysia. So you can

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see the wide range of situations
both in terms of what humans put

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into the atmosphere, but also in
terms of how the chemistry

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proceeds, it's a very rich
environment here in Asia to

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study the science of air
quality. Our

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instruments, or, the one we're
operating here is looking at

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both particulates and ozone in
the atmosphere. As we fly along

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a track, we're looking from the
aircraft all the way down to the

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surface.

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This is the best part of our
job, getting to come out and

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make the measurements. One of
the things we're trying to do

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with the aircraft is to really
map out the vertical

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distribution. So we have
measurements from the ground. So

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we get a good information right
at the surface. And we have a

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view from space, which NASA is
definitely interested in. So

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with the remote sensing that we
have here, we get both, we get

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the column measurements and the
vertical profiles, along with

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the DC-8, that's also doing a
lot of vertical sampling with

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highly detailed measurements.
Our

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job is to keep getting better,
we're measuring more things from

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the DC-8 than we've ever
measured before. We're combining

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two planes together in a way
that's never been done before.

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We're building models that can
predict more accurately than

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ever before. And we need those
things because the atmosphere is

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changing.

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Seoul metropolitan area has a
population of over 10 million

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people, meaning people are
sharing the air regardless of

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their willingness. So the poor
air quality means really

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influential effects to many
people. There are many entities

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involved in this Asia AQ, from
starting from a space agency

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such as NASA and our Ministry of
Environment in Korea, the

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partnerships are most important
because as scientists, we're

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here to provide information.
Yes, we do think air quality is

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a problem. We do want to see it
improve. But we're not the ones

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who do that. If we want to see
that happen, we have to

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communicate what we're seeing to
people who are in a position to

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do something about that. My hope
for this mission is that we will

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be able to increase our
understanding of how each

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country faces air quality, what
their challenges are, that we

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make them better at their
forecasting and predictability

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of air quality and that we can
pinpoint things that they can

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prioritize in terms of improving
problem. This

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means a lot to us, because there
are well over 500 people

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involved in this campaign,
including scientists from the

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U.S. and Korea, and many other
countries in Asia. For example,

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we have have an outreach program
that raises the public awareness

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of this air quality, which will
eventually lead up to the

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politicians. I've been working
on satellite remote sensing for

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my scientist career, but the
best thing about this type of

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campaign is to have many
different people gather

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together, share their knowledge,
and share their data to draw a

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scientific conclusions on the
air pollution events, and they

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are evolutions