I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Loretta Mickley in the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at Harvard University, where I received my PhD. I will be starting as a NOAA Climate & Global Change (C&GC) postdoctoral fellow working with Prof. James Randerson at the University of California, Irvine in August 2022. The main goals of my current research all revolve around fire: 1) to investigate trends in the timing and magnitude of crop residue burning in northwestern India (Punjab and Haryana), as well as the drivers and air quality consequences of these shifts; 2) to quantify smoke exposure and public health impacts associated with fire emissions in Indonesia; and 3) to assess wildfires and fire-related smoke in North America. I use a combination of remote sensing, GIS, statistics, and atmospheric modeling with both ground-based and satellite-derived datasets. In the past, I worked at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on a variety of topics from physical oceanography to paleoceanography to organic biogeochemistry: 1) identifying autumn-lead global sea surface salinity predictors for prediction of winter precipitation in southwestern United States; 2) reconstructing the strength of the biological pump with carbon isotopes of benthic and planktonic foraminifera in the North Pacific in the last 600,000 years; and 3) reconstructing the late Holocene paleoclimate and paleo-vegetation of Middleton Island, Alaska with with n-alkane distributions and hydrogen isotopes. In my spare time, I enjoy poetry, photography, TV/movie soundtracks, basketball, ceramics, chess puzzles, and crime dramas.
Latest News
Conferences/Events
PhD Dissertation Defense
May 26, 2022
I passed my dissertation defense and received my PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences! My dissertation is entitled: "Modeling the impact of human-driven fires on air quality from regional and global perspectives."
Mittal Institute Profile
May 6, 2022
Harvard's Mittal Institute, where I am currently a Graduate Student Associate, wrote a profile on my research on agricultural fires and air quality in India. Check it out here!
NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellowship
March 31, 2022
I will start as a NOAA C&GC Postdoctoral Fellow in August 2022 at UC Irvine with Jim Randerson!
Geo for Good Lightning Talks Series #1
April 8, 2021
I recorded a 3-minute lightning talk on my FIRECAM and HMS Smoke apps for the Geo for Good Lightning Talk Series #1 on Earth Engine Apps (recording)!
Papers/Writing
Chemical characterization and source apportionment of organic aerosols in the coastal city of Chennai, India: Impact of marine air masses on aerosol chemical composition and potential for SOA formation
October 14, 2021
Snehitha Kommula's paper is published in ACS: Earth and Space Chemistry (main + SI)!
Excess of COVID-19 cases and deaths due to fine particulate matter exposure during the 2020 wildfires in the United States
August 13, 2021
Our collaborators at Harvard's School of Public Health, Xiaodan Zhou, Kevin Josey, and Francesca Dominici, led our paper published in Science Advances (main + SI)! See Harvard's press releases from SEAS and the School of Public Health.