Contact Information
Natural History Building
M/C 104
Urbana, IL 61801
Research Areas
Biography
I'm currently a Research Scientist. Previously I've been a Postdoctoral Research Associate under the direction of Nicole Riemer (ATMS) and Matthew West (MechSE). Before this position, I acquired my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before my PhD, I attended The College at Brockport, State University of New York where I first became interested in combining atmospheric science and computational science, by studying Meteorology (B.Sc. '07) and Computational Science (B.Sc. '07/M.Sc. '10).
Research Interests
My research interests are aerosol model development, representation of aerosol mixing state, model error quantification and the use of high-performance computing in atmospheric sciences.
Research Description
Particles found in the atmosphere consist of complex mixtures of aerosol species which have profound effects on how a particle interacts with solar radiation and the ability to act as cloud condensation nuclei. Microscale interactions at a per-particle level, such as coagulation and condensation, influence the macroscale. Due to computational constraints, atmospheric models use simplifying assumptions regarding the aerosol mixing state, which leads to uncertainties.
To address this, I've developed the particle-resolved model PartMC-MOSAIC coupled with Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model to investigate uncertainties in aerosol representation for modeling weather and climate. This model represents aerosol mixing state with great detail allowing for error quantification and benchmarking against lower detailed aerosol representation found in regional and global models.
Education
- Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
- M.Sc. in Computational Science, SUNY Brockport, Brockport NY
- B.Sc. in Meteorology, B.Sc. in Computational Science, SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY
External Links
Highlighted Publications
- N. Riemer, A. P. Ault, M. West, R. L. Craig, and J. H. Curtis [2019], Aerosol Mixing State: Measurements, Modeling, and Impacts. Reviews of Geophysics, 57. DOI: 10.1029/2018RG000615.
- J. H. Curtis, N. Riemer, and M. West, M. [2017]: A single-column particle-resolved model for simulating the vertical distribution of aerosol mixing state: WRF-PartMC-MOSAIC-SCM v1.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 4057-4079,10.5194/gmd-10-4057-2017.
- J. H. Curtis, M. D. Michelotti, N. Riemer, M. T. Heath, M. West [2016], Accelerated simulation of stochastic particle removal processes in particle-resolved aerosol models, J. Comput. Phys., 322, 21-32, DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2016.06.029.