Conferences/Events
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2022
December 12-16, 2022 at McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, IL
This year, I co-convened the session A34B/35J/42B/43A Aerosols and Air Quality over South and Southeast Asia: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts (Oral I, Oral II, Posters). I presented a talk on "Cascading delays in the monsoon rice growing season and post-monsoon agricultural fires likely exacerbate air pollution in North India" on Friday afternoon, December 16 (B56D-06: abstract) and a poster on "Assessment of digitized satellite wildfire smoke plumes with airport observations across the contiguous United States and Alaska from 2008-2021" on Thursday morning, December 15 (GH42A-25: abstract, iPoster).
Geo for Good Summit 2022
October 4-6, 2022 at Google, Mountain View, CA
I attended this year's Geo for Good Summit! (info)
10th International GEOS-Chem Meeting
June 6-10, 2022 at St. Louis, MO
I presented a poster (June 7) on "Smoke in the western United States: a comparison between satellite and airport observations." (poster, IGC10)
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."
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)!
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2020
December 7-11, 2020 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
This year, I again co-convened a (virtual) session with Shradda Dhungel and Ritesh Gautam: Aerosols and Air Pollution Extremes in South and Southeast Asia on December 15 (talks, posters). I also presented a talk on "Human-driven temporal shifts in fire activity: southwest Russia and north Australia as case study regions" on December 8 (abstract + recorded talk).
Geo for Good Summit 2020
October 20-21, 2020
I (virtually) attended this year's Geo for Good Summit! (info)
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2019
December 9-13, 2019 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
This year, I co-convened session A13M/23C with Shradda Dhungel and Ritesh Gautam: Air Pollution Extremes in South and Southeast Asia: Observations, Modelling, and Impact Studies (talks, posters). I presented a poster on "Revised estimates of agricultural fire emissions for Punjab, India: bridging gaps in satellite observations using household survey data" on Tuesday afternoon, December 10 (abstract).
Graduate Climate Conference 2019
November 7-10, 2019 at Woods Hole, MA
I presented a poster on "Detection of delay in post-monsoon agricultural burning across Punjab, India: potential drivers and consequences for air quality."
Science-A-Thon 2019
October 14-18, 2019
Like last year, I participated in Science-A-Thon. I tweeted about my #DayOfScience on Thursday, Oct. 17.
Geo for Good Summit 2019
September 16-19, 2019 at Google, Sunnyvale, CA
I did a demo pod on the SMOKE Policy Tool on Wednesday, Sep. 18 from 6-6:30PM and participated in a Build-a-thon project on "Fires in the Amazon: characterizing the relationship between fires, deforestation, and land use." (info)
9th International GEOS-Chem Meeting
May 6-9, 2019 at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
I presented a poster (6-8PM, Monday, May 6) on "Diagnosing spatial biases and uncertainties in global fire emissions inventories: Indonesia as regional case study." (poster, IGC9)
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2018
December 10-14, 2018 at Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington DC
I presented a talk (4:41-4:55PM, Wednesday, Dec. 12) on "Consequences for regional air quality from temporal shifts in post-monsoon agricultural burning associated with the double-crop cycle of Punjab, India." (abstract)
Air Pollution Extremes Workshop
November 1-2, 2018 at Columbia University, New York, NY
I presented a poster on "Temporal shifts in post-monsoon agricultural fires associated with the double-crop cycle of Punjab, India."
Science-A-Thon 2018
October 15-19, 2018
I tweeted about my #DayOfScience on Thursday, Oct. 18 for #EarthDay during Science-A-Thon 2018. The purpose of Science-A-Thon is to raise money for the Earth Science Women's Network (ESWN). During Science-A-Thon, scientists share what they do daily in the lab or field on Twitter!
Google Earth Engine User Summit 2018
June 11-14, 2018 in Dublin, Ireland
I attended my first Google Earth Engine summit! (workshop sessions). Here's a blog post written by the GEE team that has some recorded videos of the breakout sessions.
American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2017
December 11-15, 2017 at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA
I presented two talks on Tuesday, Dec. 12: 1) A multi-sensor burned area algorithm for crop residue burning in northwestern India: validation and sources of error (abstract), and 2) Sea surface salinity and temperature-based predictive modeling of southwestern US winter precipitation: improvements, errors, and potential mechanisms (abstract).
“Clearing up the Haze: New Research on Southeast Asian Pollution”
Monday, April 3, 2017 (4:15-5:30PM) at International Affairs Building, Room 918, Columbia University, New York, NY
Hosted by the Columbia Weatherhead East Asian Institude. Lecture and discussion on results from ongoing projects and our 2016 ERL paper, "Public health impacts of the severe haze in Equatorial Asia in September-October 2015: Demonstration of a new framework for informing fire management strategies to reduce downwind smoke exposure," which was a joint Harvard-Columbia study led by Shannon Koplitz. (event details)
Inaugural Planetary Health/GeoHealth Annual Meeting
April 29-30, 2017 at Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
I presented a poster in the "Global Pollution" category on the results from my work on the contributions of agricultural fires to air quality in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Pune and my senior thesis work on estimating winter agricultural burned area in northwestern India to build a new emissions inventory and reevalute public health impacts. (abstract)
Papers/Writing
Cascading delays in the monsoon rice growing season and post-monsoon agricultural fires likely exacerbate air pollution in north India
December 15, 2022
Our paper is published in JGR: Atmospheres (main + SI)! See the corresponding press release from Harvard SEAS.
Air quality impacts of crop residue burning in India and mitigation alternatives
November 14, 2022
Ruoyu Lan's paper is published in Nature Communications (main + SI)!
Google Earth Engine Book
October 6, 2022
The Google Earth Engine open-access book, "Cloud-Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine" is now available here. Morgan Crowley and I contributed a chapter on active fire monitoring (A3.1)!
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!
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.
Mittal Institute July Newsletter
July 9, 2021
Harvard's Mittal Institute, where I am currently a Graduate Student Associate, interviewed me about my research for the July newsletter. Check it out here!
Global search for temporal shifts in fire activity: potential human influence on southwest Russia and north Australia fire seasons
February 4, 2021
Our paper is published in Environmental Research Letters (main + SI)!
Detection and impacts of tiling artifacts in MODIS burned area classification
January 4, 2021
Our paper is published in IOP SciNotes (main + SI)! The Burned Area (BA) Tiling Explorer associated with the paper can be viewed here.
Enhanced aerosol particle growth sustained by high continental chlorine emission in India
November 19, 2020
Sachin Gunthe and Pengfei Liu's paper is published in Nature Geoscience (main + SI)! See articles in Nature Research Chemistry Community, Nature Geoscience News & Views, and Chemistry World for commentary on the paper.
Detection of delay in post-monsoon agricultural burning across Punjab, India: potential drivers and consequences for air quality
November 19, 2020
Our paper is published in Environmental Research Letters (main + SI)!
Crop residue burning practices across north India inferred from household survey data: bridging gaps in satellite observations
October 21, 2020
Our paper is published in Atmospheric Environment: X (main + SI, code)! The dataset associated with the paper, SAGE-IGP agricultural fire emissions in north India, can be downloaded from Harvard Dataverse.
A Bird's-Eye View of Earth: Petabytes of Satellite Data at Our Fingertips
April 14, 2020
I wrote a blog article for Science in the News on Landsat, big data, and remote sensing with Google Earth Engine! (article).
Diagnosing spatial biases and uncertainties in global fire emissions inventories: Indonesia as regional case study
December 9, 2019
Our paper is published in Remote Sensing of Environment in the special issue on "Remote Sensing of Land Change Science with Google Earth Engine" (main + SI, code)! The FIRECAM Tool associated with the paper can be viewed here.
Living in a world of extreme droughts, floods, and storms
September 27, 2019
I wrote a blog article for the special issue on water in Science in the News (article)!
Fires, smoke exposure, and public health: an integrative framework to maximize health benefits from peatland restoration
July 24, 2019
Miriam Marlier's paper is published in GeoHealth (main + SI, code)! The SMOKE Policy Tool associated with the paper can be viewed here.
I traveled to Jakarta, Indonesia to participate in this paper's public dissemination forum! I also presented this work to WRI, WWF, Greenpeace, and BNPB. We published an article on the SMOKE Policy Tool in The Conversation Indonesia on September 9 and on Google Earth and Earth Engine's Medium channel on October 23.
Missing emissions from post-monsoon agricultural fires in northwestern India: regional limitations of MODIS burned area and active fire products
February 26, 2019
Our paper is published in Environmental Research Communications (main + SI, corrigendum)!
@LadiesOfLandsat highlighted our paper for #ManuscriptMonday on December 23, 2019! (Twitter)
Global search for autumn-lead sea surface salinity predictors of winter precipitation in southwestern United States
August 13, 2018
Our paper is published in Geophysical Research Letters (main + SI, PDF)!
Quantifying the influence of agricultural fires in northwest India on urban air pollution in Delhi, India
March 30, 2018
Dan Cusworth's paper is published in Environmental Research Letters (main, SI, press release)!
Seasonal impact of regional outdoor biomass burning on air pollution in three Indian cities: Delhi, Bengaluru, and Pune
November 3, 2017
Our paper is published in Atmospheric Environment (main + SI, SI animations, code)!