CHEE Study of West Coast Wildfires Gets AGU Spotlight

The American Geophysical Union highlights intriguing earth and space science research each month in their magazine, Eos. In April 2019, the spotlight shined on a paper by CHEE graduate students working with professor Armin Sorooshian.

First author Ali Hossein Mardi crafted the paper with fellow graduate students Hossein Dadashazar, Alexander MacDonald and Rachel Braun. Additional co-authors came from NASA Langley Research Center; the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California; the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado; and the California Institute of Technology.

Titled “Biomass Burning Plumes in the Vicinity of the California Coast: Airborne Characterization of Physicochemical Properties, Heating Rates and Spatiotemporal Features,” the research analyzed data collected by a Twin Otter turboprop that flew over a number of western coastal wildfires during the summers of 2013 and 2016, including the Douglas Complex fires in southern Oregon and the costly Soberanes fire near Big Sur in California.