Poor air quality isn't just unhealthy. It's expensive.

Accurate modeling of atmospheric chemistry – which includes urban air quality and wildfire smoke – is important to both our health and our country’s economic prosperity. More than 110,000 people in the U.S. die each year due to outdoor air pollution, and the annual cost to the nation is estimated at nearly $150 billion due to disease, missed work, and damage to crops and forests.

At NSF NCAR, our scientists collaborate with the Earth system science community to advance understanding of the complex chemical processes in our atmosphere. This includes coordinating field campaigns where teams design and deploy airborne instruments that yield new insights into the chemical composition of the atmosphere and developing AI-enabled models that can more efficiently simulate the vast number of chemical reactions. Better understanding of these processes will improve air quality prediction models, leading to better forecasting of urban air quality and wildfire smoke.