Air Quality and Climate Change Assignment

Below is a brief description of what you will be seeing / doing over the two days and what we will be looking for. However, before we do, let us say this: when you are on campus, ask questions of the people who are telling you / showing you things. You will find back up material on the internet for what you will see and do, but if you don’t understand what you have seen or done how can you source appropriate background material?

The Climate Change Facility – this is a facility at the University where they are undertaking work in trying to understand what will happen to vegetation under different possible future climate change scenarios. We will be looking in your assessment to see if you have understood what the various facilities are, how they work / operate, their purpose, what data has been / is being generated and what could be done differently / better with the facility and / or the data.

The EPA Air Quality Monitoring Station – pretty much all air pollution that is of concern is not visible to the naked eye, and specialised equipment is required to measure it. The EPA facility located at the University has a number of instruments and devices to measure various outdoor air pollutants. We will be looking in your assessment to see if you have understood what the various instruments and devices are, how they work / operate, their purpose, what data has been / is being generated, how it is used and what could be done differently / better with the equipment and / or the data.

The ANSTO facility – the University operates a device on behalf of ANSTO which collects airborne particulates. The collected particulates are then sent off to ANSTO for analysis. We will be looking in your assessment to see if you have understood what the device is , how it works / operates, its purpose, what data has been / is being generated, how it is used and what could be done differently / better with the device and / or the data.

The On-Site Meteorological Station – the University has had a meteorological station on site for many years, and over time its purpose and role has changed. It has a number of instruments and devices. We will be looking in your assessment to see if you have understood what the various instruments and devices are, how they work / operate, their purpose, what data has been / is being generated, how it is used and what could be done differently / better with the instruments and devices and / or the data..

Indoor Air Quality Equipment – the technologies and techniques used to measure indoor air quality are different to those used to measure outdoor air quality. You will be shown a number of instruments and devices. We will be looking in your assessment to see if you have understood what the various instruments and devices are, how they work / operate, their purpose, what data has been / is being generated, how it is used and what could be done differently / better with the equipment and / or the data.

Air Pollution Dispersion Modelling – in order to understand or predict what may happen to an air pollutant when it is released into the atmosphere, computer based modelling is often used to predict the fate of the released pollutants (dispersion modelling). You will be given a dispersion modelling exercise using a fairly simple dispersion modelling program and will be asked to evaluate what happens when the underlying modelling assumptions change. We will be looking in your assessment to see if understood what changed in the model predictions and why, how the predictions could be used and what could be done differently / better.