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Inaugural medal to UC climatologist
Published by the Communications and Development Department 29 July 2003
A bright idea in the shower combined with 26 years of work in climatology has resulted in a University of Canterbury staff member becoming the first recipient of the Meteorological Society’s Kidson Medal.
When Professor Andrew Sturman, of UC’s Geography Department, was invited to speak to councillors at Environment Canterbury about air pollution he discovered that few people realised air pollution problems were not restricted to the areas that produced pollution. He explained that pollution could be carried from one area to another in Christchurch by air movements and that the pollution produced in one suburb could affect others.
Even a modest windspeed of one metre per second could produce air movements of 3.6 kilometres in the course of an hour. Air from well outside the city limits could flow into the city in the course of a night. “Lots of little light bulbs went on at the council meeting,” Professor Sturman said.
Later, while in the shower and thinking about better ways to explain the concept of air movements shifting pollution, Professor Sturman had an idea. Over the next few months he and specialist atmospheric modeller Peyman Zawar-Reza developed a computer model that showed where the air over Christchurch city at 10pm on a smoggy Christchurch evening had come from. It involved calculating back trajectories for parcels of air based on modelled airflow in various places around the city. It was a simple idea, Professor Sturman said, but one that, apparently, had not been tried before.
The paper resulting from the work, “Application of back-trajectory techniques to the delimitation of urban clean air zones”, published in Atmospheric Environment (2002), won Professor Sturman the inaugural Edward Kidson medal from the Meteorological Society of New Zealand.
Dr Richard Turner, President of the Meteorological Society complemented the authors on the way they used a standard modelling technique to produce high-resolution results. He also said the paper was valuable because the authors had been careful to validate the performance of the model with field results.
Professor Sturman and Dr Zawar-Reza ran the model for various weather situations in Christchurch and found air tended to flow at night into the urban area from the west and from the Port Hills to the south. Even though these areas did not experience smog problems themselves they could have an effect on the air quality of the city. This suggested the clean air zone for Christchurch should be much larger than the city limits and include these areas.
Professor Sturman said his research had led to strong links with Environment Canterbury and he was advising the council as it addressed air pollution issues. He had also given evidence to the Environment Court on the air quality implications for the city of proposed new subdivisions.
Professor Sturman’s research is part of an ongoing larger project initiated by the Health Research Council that aims to produce a suite of management tools that could be applied to any city in New Zealand linking emissions from a variety of sources to health effects in residents. This research involves a variety of institutions including NIWA, the Wellington and Otago medical schools, Landcare and private consultants. The air pollution modelling research was initially funded under a collaborative FRST project with NIWA.
For more information contact: Email andrew.sturman@canterbury.ac.nz
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