Faculty Research Fellow Jeffrey Geddes Presents Research on Global Air Quality at GEOS-Chem Conference

Jeffrey Geddes, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, recently presented research at the International GEOS-Chem Conference (IGC10) held at Washington University in St Louis.

At the conference, Geddes shared preliminary work in a poster titled, “Impact of Global Climate and Land Use Change on Soil Reactive Nitrogen Emissions.” Highlighting land model simulations by BU Earth & Environment graduate student Anthony Wong, this presentation summarized how each Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenario has different “fingerprints” of climate and land-use change on emissions of reactive nitrogen oxide and ammonia from soils, with potentially large ramifications for global air quality that will need to be investigated.

GEOS-Chem is a grassroots open-access global model of atmospheric chemistry that is used by research groups around the world, developed openly by the community with scientific direction provided by the GEOS-Chem Steering Committee. Geddes is a GEOS-Chem steering committee member, and acts as co-chair of the Chemistry-Ecosystems-Climate working group. The conference provides a platform for the worldwide GEOS-Chem community to learn about model development, discuss research priorities in breakout groups, and share their latest science applications.

The research Geddes shared at IGC10 relates to his work as a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, where he leads a two-year project titled “Global Air Quality in the 22nd Century: The Role of Climate- and Land Use-Driven Perturbations to Atmospheric Nitrogen Cycling.” The project aims to quantify climate- and land use-driven changes to the atmospheric nitrogen cycle that may cause unexpected, and previously unexamined, impacts on global air quality.