Elizabeth Asher, portable optical particle spectrometers

Elizabeth Asher is a key contributor to NOAA’s Balloon Baseline Stratospheric Aerosol Profiles project where she has pioneered the deployment of Portable Optical Particle Spectrometers (POPS) at multiple locations and at critical times to measure key episodes, such as the Raikoke (2019) and Hunga-Tonga (2022) volcanic eruptions, as well as the 2022 Australian New Year's fires. Her innovations and resourcefulness have allowed the POPS to survive long-duration flights in harsh conditions and for extended periods over large geographic regions. Asher’s work has produced an entirely new type of stratospheric dataset which will answer long-standing questions about aerosol dispersion, variability, and background conditions in a critical region of the atmosphere.