James L. Carmon Scholarship

Alison Banks, a doctoral student in the Department of Geography, applies critical state-of-the-art Earth system modeling to understand how climate change affects global air quality. Each rainfall event cleanses the atmosphere of harmful pollutants (such as particulate matter), but climate change is redistributing rainfall patterns and frequency across the globe. Conventional representation of rainfall in climate models tends to bias rainfall as “too-light-and-too-frequent.” By crafting a simulation where particle emissions are held constant, combined with a new technique that represents clouds at all scales, Banks is developing a model that could help identify areas where air quality is deteriorating because of climate change. Her research advances scientific understanding of rainfall patterns and the health impacts of harmful air quality events.