Dr Ailish Graham

Profile

I’m a research fellow in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, where I work in the Atmospheric Chemistry Modelling Group and Biosphere and Atmosphere Group. I work for the National Centre for Earth Observation. My research is focussed on the impacts of fires on air quality and people. My current work aims to add tropical peat fire emissions into the FINN dataset (one of the key fire emissions datasets used in modelling studies). Alongside this, I will add tropical peat fires into the INteractive Fires and Emissions algoRithm for Natural envirOnments (INFERNO) fire model, which will be coupled to the UK's Earth System Model (UKESM version 2).

Before this, I worked on the KaLi and PaCSAC projects.

KaLi focussed on the air quality impacts of peatland fires in Indonesia. The project used observational and model data to improve understanding of the impacts of peat fires on people’s lived experience. For the observational work, we deployed a network of small sensors across Central Kalimantan in June 2023 to measure the impacts of peat fires on air quality. The sensors were placed both indoors and outdoors in local peoples’ houses and offices within villages affected by peat fire smoke. This allowed us to measure the impacts of peat fire smoke on indoor and outdoor air quality in the region. We combined this with results from a quesitonnaire on how much time people spend indoors and outdoors to estimate people’s exposure. For the modelling work, we used WRF-Chem to simulate the impacts of the fires on people across the region and Indonesia. As a follow on study, in 2024, we deployed a further 100 small sensors across the region, many of these sensors continue to measure air pollution now.

The PaCSAC project focused on the impacts of current and future agricultural emissions on air pollutants (particularly fine particulate matter and ozone) and crop yields in China. In order to identify feasible future agrciultural emissions reductions options the project worked closely with Chinese stakeholders. The impacts of the identified emissions reductions options on air quality were modelled using WRF-Chem to allow the impacts on human health and crop yields to also be quanified.

Alongside this work I was involved in a Met Office Academic Partnership with Ben Drummond who works in the Met Office's Numerical Atmospheric-dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME) team. The project aimed to investigate the effect of model resolution on the modelled impacts of wildifres on AQ using the Saddleworth Moor 2018 wildfire as a case-study. We compared simulations for the fires from WRF-Chem (10 km resolution) and 3 NAME configurations (12 km, 2.2 km resolution and 1 km).

Research interests

My main reserach interests are:

• The relationship between emissions and meteorology and their impact on regional air quality (AQ) (paper) 
• Atmospheric modelling of air pollutants (e.g. PM2.5, O3 and NO2)
• The impact of fires on AQ (e.g. the 2018 Saddleworth Moor fires (observational and modelling) , the Australia megafires 2019/2020 (observational and modelling))

Qualifications

• PhD: Simulation and evaluation of regional UK air quality using WRF-Chem
• MRes Climate and Atmospheric Science
• BSc Geological Oceanography

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science