Maria Paula Velásquez García

Profile

I am a final-year PhD student in the School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability at the University of Leeds. Since 2018, I have worked in various research groups, assessing air quality and atmospheric processes at local and regional scales, primarily in northern South America. I led investigations on air quality in the Aburrá Valley, Colombia, characterising the impacts of wildfire emissions. The results supported the need to further understand the long-range transport of pollutants, mainly from wildfire emissions, their physical interactions, and chemical dynamics, to make better human and ecosystem health decisions. My master's dissertation aligned with my motivation to understand fire risk and emissions better. I analysed strategies to reduce BC and CO₂ emissions from forest fires in Colombia, aiming to contribute to Colombia's NDCs (National Determined Contributions). Currently, I am pursuing a PhD on modelling and evaluating wildfire emissions and impacts. This project is funded by NERC Panorama DTP and NCEO.

For the first part of my PhD, I evaluated the JULES-INFERNO fire model over South America using different wildfire emission inventories. We investigated the processes underlying observed/modelled spatiotemporal biases in INFERNO-simulated fire CO emissions to identify the next steps toward improving the INFERNO fire model and fire modelling in South America. This work led to the accepted manuscript titled "Understanding drivers and biases of simulated CO emissions from the INFERNO fire model over South America”. After that, I used IASI retrievals to analyse formic acid levels in fire plumes and their evolution as plumes age. Formic Acid is poorly constrained, so in this study we analyse its budget using weeklong observations, from which we hypothesise key sources and suggest avenues to further close its balance. This work is in preparation for submission. Currently, for the final part of my PhD, I aim to quantify the intercontinental long-range transport of biomass-burning pollutants between South America and Africa. Here, we are using the regional emissions perturbation experiment suggested in the HTAP3 project with the UK Earth System Model (UKESM).

During my PhD, I have had the opportunity to participate in projects such as SatSchool, which brings the scientific use of satellites to Schools in the UK and presents science as a career path to kids and young people. I actively participated in mentoring projects with GeoLatinas, and I currently serve on the executive committee of ALACEA, the Latin America and Caribbean Assembly for aerosol research.

Research interests

• Wildfire emissions' physical and chemical interactions in the atmosphere.
• Impact of wildfire emissions on air quality and climate in South America (e.g. Wildfire aerosols and dust transport to northern South America).
• Long-range transport of pollutants. ACP - Long-range transport of air pollutants increases the concentration of hazardous components of PM2.5 in northern South America (published paper).
• The interaction between local emissions and meteorology (e.g., low clouds in the Aburra Valley).
• Air quality monitoring network (e.g., SIATA network in the Aburrá Valley).

Qualifications

• BSc Environmental Engineer, Faculta de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Medellín
• MSc Environmental Science and Management, University of York