Dylan B. Millet

Some memes are relatable they aren’t even like funny, just actively insulting.

NASA Earth Science Division provides key data In May, the US administration proposed budget cuts to NASA, including a more than 50% decrease in funding for the agency’s Earth Science Division (ESD) (1), the mission of which is to gather knowledge...

Save data provided by NASA's Earth Science Division, as outlined by a letter in Science magazine www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @biometlab.bsky.social @paulstoy.bsky.social @dbm.bsky.social @agu.org @ametsoc.org

A letter in Science about the importance of NASA Earth Science from several members of the recently-dissolved NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee.

Out today online and in the 7/24 issue.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Clouds darkening over NOAA research. We are slated for elimination in next years budget. Astonishing loss to the nation and the world if it happens.

And announced today, Stan was selected as one of the 2024 class of AAAS Fellows:
www.aaas.org/programs/fel...

Even though it only just became public, selections were made back in November so Stan did find out at that point.

Sometimes you *should* meet your (science) heroes. Stan was a giant of chemical kinetics and just a gem of a person. We will miss him.

Folks on this platform will readily think of many other examples. This type of research gives us information we need for smart, informed planning. We can have good-faith policy arguments about what to *do*, but choosing to be uninformed by not collecting data … is just failure.

Volatile chemical products emerging as largest petrochemical source of urban organic emissions Chemical products contribute as much organic air pollution as transportation emissions in many cities.

… and revealed the rising importance of non-transportation emissions for urban air quality.
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Multiyear trends in volatile organic compounds in Los Angeles, California: Five decades of decreasing emissions VOCs and CO have decreased by a large factor in LA since 1960s VOC emission ratios have not changed Rate of decrease in London is more rapid, but started later

… showed how declining transportation emissions have reduced smog (psst, the Clean Air Act works!) …
doi.org/10.1029/2012...

Increasing springtime ozone mixing ratios in the free troposphere over western North America - Nature High concentrations of ozone in the troposphere are toxic and act as a greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors have caused widespread increases in ozone concentrations since the la...

… showed how intercontinental transport affects US air quality …
www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX‐AQ) This work is an overview of the NOAA/NASA Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field experiment FIREX-AQ investigated biomass burning emissions and chemist...

… demonstrated how changing wildfire emissions are impacting air quality …
doi.org/10.1029/2022...

There has been way too much groundbreaking research from CSL to mention it all here. A couple examples that often come up in my work:

CSL research helped show the role that natural VOCs play in ozone pollution (changes control strategies!) …
www.nature.com/articles/329...

NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory NOAA CSL: Advancing scientific understanding of the chemical and physical processes that affect Earth's atmospheric composition and climate.

CSL is a NOAA lab that has been foundational in atmospheric chemistry & air quality science. They are now losing young scientists that are among the best/brightest of the next generation. This degrades not just CSL but our ability to track pollution & protect health.
csl.noaa.gov

Screenshot showing an email from NASA SMD stating that the external advisory committees for the 5 NASA science divisions are being eliminated

These were *volunteer* science advisory committees that provided NASA with independent perspective and community guidance ... explain to me how eliminating these is a way to "reduce waste and abuse"

The #standupforscience2025 rallies will be held in DC and around the U.S. NEXT FRIDAY.

Please sign up to attend at standupforscience2025.org

To effectively push back the attacks on science happening now, it is so critical to show mass support for science by gathering together in the streets!

🧪

An “NSF BY THE NUMBERS” fact sheet screenshot with some facts about “ADVANCING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH IN THE U.S. AND ABROAD” -The U.S. National Science Foundation was created by Congress in_ 1950 to continue the U.S. science and technology enterprise began during World War II. -NSF allocates 94% of its approximately $8.5 billion budget for grants and awards to support research projects, facilities and STEM education. -NSF funds research in all 50 states and U.S. territories. -NSF fosters international scientific collaboration on all 7 continents around the globe. -About 2,000 academic and other private and public institutions across the U.S. conduct NSF-funded research. -NSF supports 24% of all federally funded academic fundamental research at U.S. colleges and universities. fundamental research comes from NSF. - In 2020, NSF received approximately 43,000 research proposals from scientists and engineers and funded about 12,000. - NSF-funded researchers have received 248 Nobel Prizes.

Do you want a big overview of NSF, explaining things like the fact that 24% of all federally funded academic fundamental research comes from NSF? And that 94% of its budget goes out the door in grants/awards? Here you go. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/Factsh...

"Former NOAA officials told CBS News that current employees have been told to expect a 50% reduction in staff and budget cuts of 30%."

These are the people who monitor and publish Lake Superior's conditions every day. Minnesotans along the North Shore rely on NOAA to know whether or not it’s safe to go out on the water.

These agencies and their staff do real work that keeps us safe, it just goes unnoticed - until they’re gone.

🧪 The Water Resources Center wrc.umn.edu at the University of Minnesota is looking for a new director. Come be my colleague! Application info here: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/366...

🤮 No respect for anyone using genAI to write reviews. If you don't have time to write an actual review, just decline the invitation! Sorry you're dealing with that nonsense

YouTube video by Ali the Dazzling Euler’s Equation’s Beauty Explained

youtu.be/co7gJJHf6IQ

Wonderful explanation of Euler’s Equation and foundation for Fourier transforms

A great collaboration with @chemdelphine.bsky.social, @chemj.bsky.social, @timothybertram.bsky.social, @profdesai.bsky.social, and others not on bluesky.

@mvermeuel.bsky.social has moved on and is now Ass’t Prof at Purdue, watch for cool research from his new group!
7/7

5) Curiously, current atmospheric models already tend to overpredict atmospheric ozone. So if they are also overestimating ozone deposition, this means there must be other, larger (partly offsetting!) problems with our ozone models. More research is needed 🤓
6/7

3) Ozone-driven plant phytoxicity due to ozone is also overestimated, by up to 7x!
4) Chemical reactions inside forest canopies has been proposed to be one important ozone loss mechanism. But @mvermeuel.bsky.social shows that this is trivial for the 3 forest types examined
5/7

Some interesting results: 1) the normal “big-leaf” treatment used widely in models like GEOS-Chem overpredict ozone deposition to forests by 2x! 2) These models also do not reproduce observed variability, implying that they do not capture underlying mechanisms that will control future change.
4/7

Standard atmospheric models simulate this deposition in a very rudimentary way, by treating 3D canopies as one big leaf. @mvermeuel.bsky.social combined a resolved-canopy model, a 3D atmospheric model, and atmospheric data to better understand the ozone deposition process over 3 forests
3/7

Ozone is a main driver of atmospheric chemistry, also a toxic pollutant and greenhouse gas. One of the main ways it is removed from the atmosphere is through dry deposition to the Earth’s surface, especially to plant canopies (it is also phytotoxic)
2/7

A Vertically Resolved Canopy Improves Chemical Transport Model Predictions of Ozone Deposition to North Temperate Forests Simplified deposition scheme used in 3D models overpredicts forest O3 uptake by up to 2× ${\times} $; this bias is removed when using a resolved canopy Over half of O3 deposition at 3 sampled for...

🧪 New group paper by @mvermeuel.bsky.social!
A vertically-resolved canopy improves chemical transport model predictions of ozone deposition to north temperate forests, in @agu.org JGR-Atmos. dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024...
#Chemsky

Thread!
1/7

Late-breaking job ad for a tenure-track position in climate science (broadly defined) at Harvard. The committee will start reviewing applications on January 21, 2025. Please share with interested candidates.
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/14496

Hard agree on #2. 8+2 is just too short