Sarah Smith’s Ph.D. work focuses on understanding the chemical and transport processes contributing to the seasonality of Arctic aerosols, using a combination of satellite observations and state-of-the-art numerical model experiments. One of the key challenges to understanding Arctic processes is a paucity of observational constraints. Sarah has recently worked to improve our understanding of the spatial variability of Arctic aerosol seasonality, which will provide important context to past and future in situ observations. She is also working to understand biases in aerosol satellite retrievals at high solar zenith angles, which will help constrain representations of aerosol seasonality in the high latitudes. In future work, Sarah plans to investigate the dynamical mechanisms associated with intrusions of aerosol-laden parcels into the region, which will help us understand the processes associated with long-range transport of aerosols and improve our representations of short-lived climate forcers in the Arctic.
