Dr. Patrick Sheridan Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Analytical, Nuclear and Environmental Chemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 1986
Bachelor of Science, Chemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 1980
Responsibilities/Bio
As Chief of the GMD Aerosol Group, Dr. Sheridan's primary responsibility is to oversee the operation and data flow of the NOAA ESRL Global Federated Aerosol Network. The goals of this surface aerosol monitoring program are to characterize means, variability, and trends of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols, and to understand the factors that control these properties. The measurements from this network provide critical ground-truth for satellite measurements, as well as key aerosol parameters for global-scale models. The Federated Network consists of aerosol monitoring systems located at the six NOAA Baseline Observatories and over 20 regional monitoring stations operated around the world by collaborating scientists. In this network, NOAA supplies proven designs and protocols for aerosol sampling infrastructure, standard operating procedures, GMD-developed and supported data acquisition, processing, visualization, editing, and archiving software, and technical expertise and troubleshooting assistance. The collaborators cover all of the long-term station costs (e.g., site, power, internet, instruments, technicians, etc.). The result is a long-term, cooperative program with shared data access, making high-quality atmospheric measurements that are directly comparable with the other stations in the network and following established aerosol sampling protocols (e.g., NOAA, GAW).
Current research interests of Dr. Sheridan include working to improve and simplify the measurement of aerosol optical properties to better determine their effects on aerosol radiative forcing, efforts to reduce the uncertainties in aerosol black/brown carbon and aerosol light absorption measurements, investigation of water uptake and cloud nucleation properties of atmospheric aerosols, and working to better incorporate aerosol measurements from surface monitoring stations into global climate models. Dr. Sheridan currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Journal of Aerosol and Air Quality Research (AAQR). He was presented with the NOAA Administrator's Award in 2006, the Department of Commerce Silver Medal in 2014, and the NOAA Technology Transfer Award in 2015.
The NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) maintains four Baseline Observatories to monitor the atmospheric background levels of trace gases and aerosols. Measurements at these remote sites permit us to determine to what extent the global backgrounds are changing over time. Since aerosols are perturbed near their sources, these remote Observatories are in good locations to assess global baseline changes to the atmospheric aerosol. They are, however, in sub-optimal locations to assess human influences on climate. In order to better understand anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing and its effects on climate, and to reduce the uncertainties associated with extrapolating relatively few discrete observations up to regional or global scales, many more stations in different climatological regions were necessary. To accomplish this ESRL has over the past two decades significantly expanded its network of stations to include locations that are at times influenced by anthropogenic emissions. This was done through collaboration with many international science organizations and universities, with the result being the creation of the NOAA Federated Aerosol Network (NFAN). The goals of this surface aerosol monitoring program are to characterize means, variability, and trends of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols, and to understand the factors that control these properties. The measurements from this network provide critical ground-truth for satellite measurements as well as key aerosol parameters for global-scale models. NFAN data permit estimates of how much of the aerosol radiative forcing at these locations is caused by human activities and sheds light on whether changes in policy can influence the effects of these aerosols. The NFAN consists of aerosol monitoring systems located at the Baseline Observatories and about 30 regional monitoring stations operated around the world by collaborating scientists. In this network, NOAA supplies proven designs and protocols for aerosol sampling infrastructure, standard operating procedures, ESRL-developed and supported data acquisition, processing, visualization, editing, and archiving software, and technical expertise and troubleshooting assistance. The result is a long-term, cooperative program with shared data access, making high-quality atmospheric measurements that are directly comparable with the other stations in the network and following established aerosol sampling protocols (e.g., NOAA, GAW). This presentation describes the NFAN, highlights some of the technology and software that have been developed for use in the network, and presents some scientific results from these collaborations.