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Posted: April 14, 2008

New Fellows Bring New Perspective to CIRES

The Council of Fellows, CIRES’ governing body, has elected two new members: Joost de Gouw and Tinjgun Zhang.

De Gouw, who works at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in the Chemical Sciences Division, studies organic carbon in the atmosphere, including its sources, its chemistry, and the processes that govern its transport and eventual breakdown. Organic carbon is a precursor for smog and chemically formed particle pollution, or haze.

During April, de Gouw will travel to Fairbanks, Alaska to take measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), another type of air pollutant, from NOAA’s P3 aircraft. VOCs are emitted in large quantity during biomass burning. By tracking plumes of the pollutant, de Gouw hopes to better understand how air masses cross large distances from Europe and Asia to the American Arctic.

De Gouw joined CIRES as a researcher in 2001 after completing a post-doctoral appointment here in 1998-1999. He earned his PhD in physics and astronomy at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1994.

Zhang hails from CIRES’ National Snow and Ice Data Center where he has conducted research on permafrost and seasonally frozen ground since 1996. Zhang, a senior research scientist, is an expert in using passive microwave remote-sensing techniques to understand freeze and thaw cycles of soils around the world. He also conducts studies on permafrost degradation and climate change over the Siberian Arctic through in situ data analysis and numerical modeling.

This summer, Zhang will travel to the Tibetan Plateau in western China to survey the changes in permafrost and frozen ground. He and his colleagues in China maintain a monitoring network along the newly constructed Qinghai-Xizang Railway and want to understand how railway operations, in addition to other environmental changes, impact the permafrost environment.

In early July, Zhang will also travel to Alaska to study microbial activities in permafrost as part of an International Polar Year project.

Zhang earned his PhD at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska – Fairbanks in 1993, where he studied permafrost and climate change on the North Slope of Alaska.

De Gouw and Zhang will be unique additions to CIRES’ Council of Fellows, where most of the 42 members are rostered faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder or NOAA employees. Zhang will be the fourth representative from NSIDC to serve on the current council. De Gouw will be one of just three fellows who are CIRES employees working at NOAA-ESRL. Both hope this will allow them to bring their unique perspectives to the table when discussing CIRES’ future research and organization.

Joost de Gouw

Tinjgun Zhang