 Hello, my name is Simon Clarke, I'm the EGU Committee Programme Coordinator. And today's webinar, we'll be discussing air pollution. We'll be starting discussion between me and Craig, and that will be followed by a audience Q&A. If you have a question, please enter the question using the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. Yes, and I think that's pretty much everything. Yeah, so the questions will be asked alongside questions audio sent in. And it'll be given to our special guest today, which is Dr Craig Hoku. Hi Craig, how are you? Hello, I am joining from relatively sunny Yorkshire, and I had to look outside because it was raining early again. It's just been a bit of a miserable few days. I mean, that's UK weather, mid-latitude weather in the nutshell to be fair. So I'm not pinning that just in the UK. Hello, hi. To start with the questions, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and where expertise is in? Yes. So firstly, thank you Simon for introducing and bringing me onto this. I am Dr Craig Hoku. I am an air quality scientist based at the University of York. But my journey to get into where I am has been a bit convoluted. I'm a mathematician by background. So I did my degree quite a few years ago at King's College of London. I then moved up to the North to then do a PhD in atmospheric sciences where I specialised in focal physics. I then doubled in that for a bit after I finished my PhD. And now I am specialising in UK air quality. And more importantly, how we can bring in new data interrogation techniques from areas such as finance and stuff to improve our scientific understanding in terms of how to improve air quality. So that's what I kind of do in the nutshell. I also bake and climb, but I don't think that's really part of the question that you asked. But I just wanted to throw that in there as a bit of a spanner in the words because why not? As a scientist or free-rounded human beings, who do you suggest? I'm a multi-faceted human that also happens to be a scientist in a nutshell. Let's do it in our air quality expertise. So there are a lot of different types of air quality problems from small to particulates. I think the first thing we should probably define our set of boundaries on before we go further is what makes air pollution, what is a pollutant? So when we talk about pollutants, we kind of want to go a step back and we want to talk about what are known as aerosol. So aerosol are by definition small particles that are suspended to be air. And by aerosol, we can talk about sea salts that could, for example, be at the coasts. We can talk about pollen as well, which is kind of prominent given that we are in a few of the season. But then a subset of these aerosols can actually be harmful to human health. And that's what we mean by pollutants or air pollution. So generally speaking, where we talk about pollution, we're talking about aerosols that get exhausted from cars, from industrial sites. And even if it is from cooking, but these pollutants can be harmful to human health. And so that's what we mean when we're talking about pollution and equity. Excellent. So there's, I guess, lots of different types of pollutants in that case, but coming to that like ozone particulates smoke as well. Yeah. So we've got quite a few different types of pollutants. So the one that you probably most people are aware of are things such as ozone, but we also have things as such as particulate matter or PM. And the two terms that you'll hear are say PM 10 and PM 2.5. But we've also got other types of pollutants that are kind of important. So we've got what are known as NOx or nitric oxides or nitric dioxides. And they all impact human health or they all impact our environment or our experience in different ways. Which is why air pollution is such a complicated problem because it's not just one pollutant does X. It's one pollutant can do X, Y and Z, but another pollutant can also do X, Y and Z. And it all kind of work in this weird multi-faceted system that is very complicated to model. So there's a lot of overlap between the impacts of these pollutants and human health then basically. Yes. Yeah. So it's not even, it's like, so it's a combination of things. So when we talk about human health and air pollution, you find that certain pollutants can, depending on their size, can basically go through your hexagonal mouth and your nostrils, which will then end up basically into your lungs as well as into your bloodstream, which then means that if you're exposed to certain pollutants, you can actually then have increased cases in things such as asthma, as well as cardiovascular diseases as well. And you find that the reason as to why we are so concerned about air pollution or air quality is because long exposures to certain pollutants can not only lead to long-term health conditions, but can also consequently lead to death. And so you find that in the UK, we have around 40,000 deaths a year due to poor air quality. And across the world that really that then increases to around 7 million a year roughly. And the reason why we say roughly is because trying to equate a death due to air pollution is very difficult. Usually air pollution exposure leads to say poor cardiovascular disease, but then cardiovascular disease can also be related to other impacts as well, which is why it's very difficult to pinpoint the exact number. So it's obviously affecting a huge number of people, both in UK where you are, but also as a global issue as well and the UN has made it part of their global development goals to increase air quality. But it's also tricky to try and, I suppose, attribute its effect. So it's almost like an exacerbative effect on health rather than a direct kind of, you've got air pollution, you're poisoned, you're going to, you're going to die. When you say it like that, if it was the case of if you were, if you go into this area that has higher air pollution and you just die as terrible as it sounds, but it makes the problem a lot more simple. You find that actually because aerosol sol polluters come from so many different sources, it's not the case of just going, well, if you, for example, drive less in one particular area, then you're going to have improvements in air quality, and they find that the cars that are then stay still on the roads have exhausts that are actually still quite harmful. And so it's trying to find that balance and it's one of those things where you have to kind of go well actually if you do see a drop in, say, PM 2.5 and one given area. Oh, it's because actually we put this one policy into place, but it's actually going is because it could be due to this, it could be due to people wanting to walk more, it could be due to people driving less. It could be due to the fact that people are driving the same, but the cars are a lot cleaner. There's so many reasons for it. And that's why in like the UK, for example, it's one of the biggest. When you look at all of the different science challenges that we're trying to address, air quality is still very high up on the priority list because of the number of deaths and because of the fact of the battery raises that if you're having long term exposures, and you'll then ended up in respiratory or cardiovascular diseases increasing that then has pressures on health services, for example. So increases in air pollution not only has impacts on individual health, but also it has systemic consequences as well. Yeah, exactly. And it's one of those things whereby it's a kind of knock on effect. So that's why it's one of those things where in the type of work that I do, I don't just look at say, oh, we've got air quality we need to focus on. We've kind of tried to think about it in more kind of like a societal kind of issue and sort of going, how does one impact on the other? How does the other impact on this? So in a way, like, obviously a lot of people think of air pollution, they think of the health issues, which is obviously warranted a lot of attention, but then that might also impact economic issues as well. But that also feedbacks into how we can treat the health of people. So it's a lot of interactions while quite complex, including the interactions with different types of pollutants as well. Yes. Just to quickly clarify, you mentioned like PM 2.5 and PM 10, those are the measures of how size of a particle, is that correct? So the reason why we say PM 10 or PM 2.5 is because particulate matter is a tricky one. It's usually a composition of different chemicals. So it could be, for example, something like black carbon. Black carbon could be considered as a form of particulate matter. But what you may find, for example, is that different particulate matters because of where their sources may come from, so it can come from cooking, you could come from say burning of coal, it can become a burning of wood. Rather than trying to identify the actual chemical composition, it's just easier for us to know that if you've got one of these particular matters of a certain size in that can be harmful for the following reasons. But PM 10 and PM 2.5 are usually strongly linked to damages in so many different environmental situations, but that's the reason why there's a lot of focus on those two pollutants. Okay, so the size of a particular particle, I should say, also determines how they might impact someone. So I guess it might mean that it might be easier to be absorbed into a blur stream. Yeah, so the general, so slight maths here, because if you've got a smaller particle, what you'll find is that a smaller particle of the same mass of that stuff will then result in the biggest surface area. So then that means that if you're then, for example, exposed to that, then the likelihood is that it is more likely to basically enter the body and actually then not just get completely flushed out the system, but actually get absorbed straight into the bloodstream. So that's why PM 2.5 in more recent years has had quite a lot of attention. The main thing is that if you reduce, you'll say your PM 2.5, you can actually reduce the number of cases of asthma, for example. That's the reason why there's been a lot of focus, but there's also been some work. So in my department, I'm in the, sorry, in my department, so the aspect chemistry department, you actually find that there's been a lot of work to actually make sure that air quality can be really linked to things such as dementia. So how, for example, certain committees can end up going into the brain. And that is an area that I'm going to stop right there because that's as much as I can basically tell you about. Okay, so particulates can really have a huge damaging effect on the human health. Let me give you an example of what a PM 2.5 particularly it might be. Is that what kind of black smoke is. Yeah, so you will find that PM 2.5 can sometimes come from an original source. So, for example, it could say come from say burning of coal. And then you may also find as well that PM 2.5 may potentially be formed within the atmosphere itself. So if we are looking at say fog, for example. So fog, a very heavily polluted environment such as Delhi can actually be a suitable environment for the formation of new PM 2.5 particles. And that's why it's very difficult for you to be able to pinpoint it. What you will find is that as well when it comes to PM 2.5 or PM 10, because it is very rare that you tend to usually get it from an actual source. So what will happen is, is that it's usually a combination of several things in the UK, for example, we may actually be finding that PM 2.5 or PM 10 actually come from say mainland Europe, and then it basically passes over. And that's why it's a very complicated question to work out where it's usually sourced from, but because even if, even if in the UK we're not doing these activities, other places may still be doing it. So it's definitely an international problem when trying to tackle pollution. So I guess there are references upon you for a few times now about the spatial distribution of air pollution. So there's places that are more affected globally. So I guess there are people who are also more likely to be exposed to air pollution. And I guess is that more likely low and middle income countries. Yes. I don't know, because I think generally speaking, lower and middle income countries do make it the majority of the world's population. So when people talk about the global south, actually, you can talk about it as the majority world because the proportion of people within the world is a lot heavier than what you find in the global north. Now, what's really interesting is that a lot of these, a lot of these countries are going for their industrial revolution like what we were going for 200 years ago. And so because of that economical boom of increased industrial activity, what you're finding is that a lot of the population are then exposed to these really poor pollutants. So if we look at Delhi, for example, Delhi is now seen as one of the places that our folks are having the biggest economical growth within the last 20 years. However, Delhi is also known for having really poor air quality. And what's really interesting is that the poor air quality not only has the impact on say direct human health. But what you're finding is that certain pollutants can actually then result in your surface visibility then decreasing, which then consequently then means that if you'll say driving and you then end up hitting really thick smog or fog in this case, you can actually then result in having say car crashes, as well as impact on say, oh, we've got to allow for X amount of planes to be released at this hour, but now we can't because of the smog that's basically come over. And so that's why when people say, oh, well, these countries are sort of exposed to it. The reason I kind of got is because like in the UK, for example, if low and middle income countries were the only ones to be exposed, then air qualities wouldn't be seen as a problem for us to sort of kind of like look into for the next, say 20, 30 years old. There's definitely some global inequalities, but those inequalities are just on the global scale, but also on a national scale as well. Yeah. And so I suppose it makes sense that the, I suppose you could say stratified long income. So what do you mean about those neighborhoods that have perhaps received less investment or a low amounts of cartonship might actually see higher levels of pollution perhaps if they're. Yeah, so it's a number, it's a set this. So when we talk about environmental inequalities, for example, so I'm going to use the UK as an example, or better, I'm actually using us because there's been a lot of studies that sort of looked into this. If we took the case of say Hurricane Katrina, what we actually found is that a lot of black Americans couldn't return back to their homes after the hurricane and hit due to the fact that the homes prior to the hurricane were hurricane resistance. And so, and that is due to not only, and that's mostly down to social economical influences, and you find that if you're in a lower social economical scenario, then that meant that you then didn't have the right type of housing, which then consequently meant that you're then less likely to be able to rehabilitate afterwards, but that also encompassed a lot of black and brown people. And you find that these inequalities sort of are quite prominent in say, developed nations. In relation to air quality, what you find is that because a lot of black and brown people, for example, live in urban environments, they are more willing to be exposed to say poor air quality. And what's really interesting is that the first death that was linked to environmental issues was actually somebody who was black British. And so, that's why when people talk about how it's, there isn't a difference, there isn't a difference in terms of like say different groups, actually there is. The problem is is that the way in which you sort of capture air quality data doesn't necessarily highlight that in the UK. And that's some of the questions that I'm hoping to kind of addressing my research. Okay, so there's a lot of key points you brought up there. There's one thing that stuck out to me is low income neighborhoods are really going to be worse affected because they're pretty close to motorways, we close this through a sense of industrial pollution versus rich neighborhoods which I imagine would have a higher car ownership, but I guess what close to those vectors of transport like motorways actually when you think about it, and probably have a lot of greenery as well. And so there's a stratification, I keep saying stratification as far as like a difference in long economic lines, but it's also lines are going long for example, racial lines as well if there's a history of socio economic discrimination. I suppose that means basically, if you have a certain identity, social identity, that could just mean you're going to be more likely to be affected by pollution and I could extend to other things as well for example I think age as well right so yeah. Yeah, I think that when some argue how can it be that your racial identity means that you're then less likely to that you're more likely to be exposed to poor environmental scenarios. And as simple as just saying a implies beat is going because historically black and brown people say in the UK were more exposed to no social economical classes. It then meant that the infrastructure is in order for you to be able to not be exposed to say poor equality or better housing. All of these things kind of come into play. And when you look at the world majority, for example, you find that let's take it India, Delhi experiences one of the worst areas of air quality where we look at things such as climate change, we find that a lot of countries within Africa are already experiencing quite a bit of climate change. So this is why when people talk about black and brown people they're not just talking about it say in the local sense but they're talking about it sort of like the global sense. I think what happens is now become a lot more prominent that people are now going actually there may be this this this discrepancy. And more work needs to be done into that. And I know that there's some work that for example is looking at like how different levels of deprivation so the deprivation level deprivation index rather would look at things such as the school that you went to what class you fall into racial group and multiple levels of these deprivations can actually be linked to you then having poor air quality exposure for example. So it gets very complicated very quickly. Yeah, so there's complexities in the types of pollutants and how they interrupts complexities in terms of like how they interact with different systems then like healthcare systems like no systems and also complexities in terms of how people are affected depending on perhaps the demographic and where they live and where they live in. Yeah, and I think it's sort of the reason as to why you can't look at air quality as its own single. You can't look at it from just one perspective you kind of need to have a very interdisciplinary approach to it. So as a data scientist, I need to be working with social scientists social scientists need to be working with biology to be working with say mental health special mental health specialist need to be working with chemist and it all kind of you need a team that have all of these different perspectives in order for you to be able to address the problem in a way that is not only going to reduce air quality rather, but do it in a way that's not going to be for example systematically impacting people in a discrepancy due to say social economic classes as an example. So, when really you start talking about solutions to try and I suppose rectify these discrepancies. It's a multiple approach to some part of that might be policies discussing restricting the pollution from exhaust, also looking at how those are affected or, I suppose, distributed as well as can imagine if a child in a poor neighbourhoods goes to school and develops asthma or I think I read before this but it can also affect Alzheimer's etc. mental capacities that child even if they have the mobility to leave that neighbourhoods which they might not have in their late in life, perhaps from their teenage or older, their ability to achieve or in life is limited by the environmental factors as well, it's not just individual. And I think that's a really important point there because it's sort of like even if you've got the social mobility to be able to move somewhere else, the reality is that if you've grown up in an environment that has already sort of been exposed to these poor pollutants then you're already going to be sort of like at a disadvantage even when you grow up. And it's not as simple as just going well in that case where everybody just needs to move to cleaner areas because the reality is that you're sort of then kind of putting the blame on the people that are in this scenario that they can't do anything about. And so when it comes to doing policies for example it's not as simple as just going oh well if we've got X amount of cars in this area then for example then we didn't need for example to just reduce the number of cars because there's some areas where you can say okay well you need to produce the amount of cars in this area and provide public transport, but then that's still going to have a problem with people who for example are say doing contracted jobs that are in unsociable hours, which that means that they don't have access to public transport as to how they're going to get to work. And it's one of those problems where again that's the reason why whenever it comes to me talking about policy with some of my colleagues they just go oh well we need to do X and go okay that's great. But that's not going to have an impact on say people who are already well off it's going to have an impact on those who are reliant on driving these types of cars. And so if you're going to do a policy you then need to go okay right how can we ensure that we put something in that's not going to have say negative impacts in other areas. So it's not scary. So if you live near an industrial site and you go well in that case we want to focus on green energy. If you shut that industrial site down then you may potentially be making thousands of people unemployed. It's a very it's one of those sort of fine balances and that's what makes trying to do type of policy quite tricky. Sure so it's a complex problem with a complex solution. But I think this is where it gets this is why I find it interesting and I think this is why there are even though it sounds like it's all kind of doom and gloom. But I think because people are now taking this sort of multifaceted approach, I do think that actually there will be some viable solutions I do think that UK will be able to address a lot of the air quality problems that we're having. Of course we've got the complication that climate potentially could make air quality worse. And that's a system that is very interesting to think about because there are some people who know how will climate potentially have impacts on air quality. And so I think the best way we can do is ensure that if we are aware that it's going to worsen it, that we also sure that we're doing on the local scale kind of doesn't exacerbate that that makes sense. So can I just quickly on a tangent from this solutions conversation. Yes, just ask, like how will climate change impact evolution. Do we know or do we have a general idea at all. It depends. So, part of the work that I did was looking at what's known as aerosol fog interactions. So this was sort of what I did during my PhD. And when we say aerosol fog interactions, the general idea is how do certain aerosol either make fog thicker or thinner is the easiest way to think about or make the surface visibility better or worse. So we can generalize this the aerosol clouds interactions, you've got different sort of like interactions that you happen that you have happened. So some aerosol will result in you having a cooling effect on the atmosphere. Other aerosol will have a warming effect on the atmosphere. And this depends on whether or not so the radiation is basically either being absorbed by these aerosol or being reflected back into the atmosphere. So, some aerosol or some pollutants such as ozone can actually result in a warming effect, but ozone production in our environment can actually be enhanced with sunlight. So you then may argue, okay, well, in that case, with ozone resulting in a warming effect that you're going to have production or ozone which is harmful, but then that ozone then you end up basically having a cycle on that front. On the other hand, there are other pollutants that potentially could actually result in a cooling effect. And so that's why finding that balance is really tricky. So we're aware that climate can actually enhance air quality, but then air quality because of this production of ozone can actually then enhance climate. And then it can also then have the complete opposite effect. And so it's really sort of looking at it at a case by case basis. And that's what climate scientists are also struggling with as well is actually working out what is that balance. And that's due to these aerosol direct and indirect effects. It's really tricky in a dynamic environment where the climate is also changing at a historically unprecedented rate. So climate change might potentially aid in some cases with cooling but other points, the pollution might get worse as ozone production is encouraged by water temperatures which in turn will affect people. And that's does that is that evolved in the production of smog as well. Not really. So, when we think of ozone, we've obviously got the ozone layer that sort of protects the boundary layer or our surface from harmful UV rays. There have been studies where I've actually showed that the ozone layer is heating, but within our actual layer itself the reason why we can have ozone production is because carbon source release what are known as nitric oxides. And we've got an abundance of oxygen within the atmosphere. So you mentioned before the beginning that I mentioned, that can come from car exhausts. And then we've then got oxygen called O2 within the atmosphere and what you'll find is that you've got what's known as the nitric cycle. So if you then got UV rays or sunlight, then you will then find that you then have enough energy for you to then have ozone production. And that the mean and depending on how much nitrates you have, you then basically have a much quicker reaction to ozone production. And that kind of cycles all the way through. So, this is why for example when you are looking at say, nox as a cycle, most scientists also look at ozone as well because you find that they're too very intimate. But with more ozone, they even get more warming, which then leads to then possible climate projections then basically being put forward. But then again, climate can also then result in you having more sunlight and more warming and then that cycle kind of continues to kind of interact with each other in both ways. So for people looking to provide solutions to air pollution, climate change or the potential consequences of climate change is absolutely something that needs to be considered, but it's very difficult to kind of include in any kind of solution. Can I just discuss what type of solution is out there for my from what you've said it seems there may be some kind of technical solutions but scientists my favorite like I think for example, green infrastructure perhaps or yeah, cooking technology or are there some of the solutions that people might have some of the solutions. So, I can't remember the exact year, but there was a point where all exhausts had to meet a particular criteria, which then led in dropping knocks, generally speaking, over the UK. In addition to that as well, cooking technologies have also changed as well. So what you're finding is that it's an indoor air pollution, which is an area that I don't really look into but it's also quite critical because that can also lead to several deaths. There are some scientists who look out for the and get the interactions of how different heat sources can release different pollutants. I know that they've been put some policies put forward, which now means that certain stoves can't be sold in the UK. And the other thing as well as that with burning, which also was another form of harmful pollutants, a lot of what burning is now being banned in the UK. So there's really warm fires that we like to have we can't have those as much. But these are like sort of like the kind of like bigger kind of like long term solutions. What's now happening is that they've gone, we can't just for example just put in a national policy you need to think about it and kind of like local case by case basis. So that's the way that we're kind of going about it now. And like the work that I do, what I'm hoping to come out of it is then I can then go, well, we actually noticed that if we've got this level of nitrates within the atmosphere as well as ozone in the atmosphere that we can potentially have this type of aerosol due to cooking. And the reason why we can do this is because what I do looks at what's known as the automatic urban and rural network, which is sort of like monitoring stations of air quality across the entire UK. And what I'm now doing is I'm trying to basically extract different signatures or different methods to be able to then say, Okay, so we see that when we have a spike up this, this pattern also happens as well. So we can look at potentially doing localize policy, it's a Manchester as an example. So there are a lot of solutions happening. And as somebody who is deemed to be solution focused. I mean, it's something that I'm kind of keen on, I guess. So, there's a lot of strong policy solutions which can affect overall change. But it sounds like there's also a need for more research as well, such as better monitoring to try and understand the trends in pollution. And so I think what you're doing is trying to make a fashion, the monitoring of this cost UK. Yeah, and I think this is interesting because the big one, the big sort of like story that has happened, which is the reason why we're probably doing this virtually as opposed to like, you know, in person is that the coronavirus pandemic has led to massive improvement in the world. And there was a lot of reports about this, but what you've now found is that whilst there was an improvement so we're going to go up because of economical boom or like economical growth again is now basically gone back to where it was before. But the reason why a lot of scientists will use it as the case study is because they then go, Okay, if we can potentially have policies that can have that same amount of impact. That can be where the end result is. And now what's happening is now some people are like, Okay, if we combine maybe this policy, this policy, this policy, this policy. And we know that it's going to have this decrease, this decrease and this decrease. Maybe we can get to a level that was for example, during the pandemic of equity that we would say, for example, witnessing. There is a lot of research in this area. And I guess as a mathematician, the reason why I kind of went into equity was because sometimes as mathematicians we can just kind of go well here's a number of his assistant so we're just going to do it because whatever. And for me, I wanted to ensure that the science that I was doing was not only going to be helping people on a national scale by helping people that look like me because I'm black British, I'm asthmatic, I grew up in London. And all of these factors meant that I was going to be more harmed due to poor air quality. And so for me I was really keen that I wanted to ensure that the science that I was doing is going to be helping people that look like me. Yeah. So one of the key takeaways from what you just said is that the global pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in air quality. And that was through unplanned change. So imagine what we could do with planned change. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the way that a lot of people are now starting to see it now, which is a really nice viewpoint to have. Because we can see we've all been able to see what's happened when unplanned changes happened. When unplanned change kind of has an impact on the environment. So what can we do to sort of like put some plan change into it. And I think that's where a lot of people are going. Really cool thing about the work that I do do is that if we say, oh, we've got this bit of science that's really key for X, Y and Z. What you find is actually gets implemented into policy quite quickly. So that means that part of the reason I again moved into air quality is because I could actually see that the science that was happening was actually making viable change, which is you don't necessarily see in all areas of science. And I think that's something I was like the relation between science and policy was very clear. So really it's important to make sure that whilst we're pushing boundaries on our ability to monitor and understand the current and future effects of pollution. So we also strengthen connections to policy on top of that also make sure we have a perspective that is close to how people live and how pollution will affect those different social demographics. So it's almost like three key corners what you need to interact. And I think as well and this is something that I'm very keen on. And I think that a lot of my colleagues and I started to get the message is that the public have an expertise that we as scientists don't have. And whenever I hear people talk about, oh, well, scientists don't really help me in terms of improvements of air quality or they don't actually understand us. A lot of the time some of my colleagues can be very well actually we do X, Y, Z it comes a very offensive whereas I go, why do you feel like that. And you find that by having that two way kind of communication yes it reaches less people, but you find that they then end up being able to expand on their own expertise and then tell their friends and family and their friends and family and they're just willing to listen to them then they will listen to me. And that's something that I think not just with air quality but with a lot of science we need to stop doing. But I think that if we get the public opinion involved so things such as citizen science I absolutely adore you actually will find that you will then end up strengthening the work that we're doing as opposed to prohibiting it instead. The collective science communication often involves actually asking the public to communicate to you what then you just, yeah, throwing information at them, and then get them engaged and. I mean, I love storytelling and I love hearing people's stories and what a lot of people don't realize is that despite the fact I'm a very talkative person in a group scenario and more willing to just listen to everyone else because I'm thinking about how can I expand my or how can I expand my ideas how can I expand my thinking. And that's also the same when it comes to science, because I think that a lot of the time you feel, because I went to university because I did a PhD because I've done all this really special research that means man the expert in this particular field. And when it comes to societal issues. So, things such as the coronavirus pandemic, air quality climate change. Those are the three that I can think about the top of my mind, getting the public's opinion is so important. And I think in some ways, more important than my own expertise, because actually, if you're doing science for the sake of doing science, or you think this is what people want actually is not what people want. So that's of course important when you come to try and have an actual impact on your work. Yeah. So, it's time for some public questions before we move on to those. Can I just finish with a final question and it's like, if you have one key message you'd like to convey for viewers to take away with from this discussion, what would that be? If there's one key message that I can give is don't feel afraid to ask questions about topics that may scare you. And even if it's outside of your realm. And so if me as an air quality scientist who wants to ask you questions about air quality, then feel free to ask that space. And I think that's really important because then by you feeling more confident by the knowledge that you have that the music can then tell your friends and family. This is what's happening in terms of improving air quality. And I will also kind of just reassure you that actually you are doing the right thing. That sounds okay. That sounds great. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm moving on to some questions, a few of which have been sent some of all hands. One is, let me just read them out, sorry. Is there a feedback between local weather and pollution? Yes, there is. You can have, so let's take rain for example. So there's what's called aerosol scavenging, which is just simply the removal of aerosol from an environment. So you can have, so in order for you to have clouds form, you need to have aerosol in the atmosphere, because what will happen is is then the water vapor will then condense into aerosol particles and then that is also removing aerosol from the atmosphere. But you've also got what's known as wet scavenging, whereby you can actually have rain wash out aerosol out of the atmosphere. So if we then relink that to say air quality or air pollution, you can in some cases actually have increases or improvements of local air quality if you do say have a thunderstorm. But then what you'll then find is then because you've got a closed system that pollution will then go somewhere else and to actually it's still within the environment is just not necessarily for example the stuff that we breathe. So that's an example of how local meteorology or local weather can actually have impacts on air quality. But on the same side, for example, if you've then got say, if you have like say, a really sunny set of days for example, you may actually see sometimes that you've been having like this weird haze that starts to form. But the best way I can describe it is that it's where you see an aura, it's like this kind of wave that some falls into the atmosphere. That's usually due to the fact that what you're finding is that these aerosol or actually kind of like kind of scattering the light within the atmosphere, which then actually then has impacts on say you know surface visibility, but because obviously of like ozone production, you can actually have increases in ozone. So that's another way of kind of like how it kind of impacts. There's also things such as boundary layers and stuff, but I'm not going to get into that because I can get very complicated very quickly turbulence turbulence. So I think that's one of the things that I think is really important to me is the fact that you've moved from a kind of a physical science background into a chemical one and this is not really related to the pollution as much but it was more I think how do you find crossing those disciplines as an expert. I've got a backstory to this actually. So a level results they was very recent, but 10 years ago I missed my Cambridge grades to do mathematics with people don't know. And most people feel that the reason I miss them is because like you know I just kind of messed up the example which I did and everything like that or people that support me. But the reason why I messed them up is because the day before my big exam I ended up watching the 2011 Tony Awards live when I started foster one the Tony Award for best actress in the musical. And that meant that I was really tired for all of the big exams that I needed to do Cambridge. Now when Cambridge called me the day that I messed it up and stuff. They said at the time well we can offer you say natural sciences with chemistry, and I said, and I quote, you would never find me dead in the chemistry department so I'm saying no, which is a memory. Because chemistry is all where I'm now. So the reason I kind of bring this kind of backstory into it is because I think that when I was back at school and I think this is sort of like bigger question by the education system. I always thought that chemistry was sort of no you need to just do experiments we need to do this you need to do that. It needs to be sort of like reactions and everything. Whereas now I just see chemistry is just sort of a mathematical system. So going to the original point of going from say a physical science to chemistry. I've actually found the transition to be quite okay. And I only say this because I went into a physical sciences and mathematician. I also then went into chemistry as a mathematician. I describe us as comedians so we just kind of like adapt to the system and all the environment and just kind of go with the flow. And what I found is that actually a lot of the meteorology that I did in my previous degree is actually strengthened the work that we're doing because if for example they go. I found this increase in this particular pollutant due to cars and emissions over this area but actually that's more of a meteorology effect as opposed to a chemical effect. But so yeah essentially it's kind of enhanced the work that I've done but because also I did a lot of aerosol stuff, which kind of doubled into chemistry bits in here more than I wanted to. It wasn't too bad. So it's helped but because you mentioned the importance of having an interdisciplinary perspective and team when approaching solutions. Moving from physics chemistry has actually helped you to develop your own type of interdisciplinary perspective as all that's helped. So, so the reason I'm really key about interdisciplinary work is because I went from being a mathematician to then working in local government the year that they implemented the 2012 care act to then going into meteorology to now going into air quality. Because air quality is one of those areas whereby you need to have a kind of interdisciplinary approach I'm like, I've got depending on who I'm talking to I stick my mathematician how my data science how my meteorology how my social science how. And I just kind of switch sometimes I can switch hats in the same conversation. But you kind of need that. So when it comes to then talking to then the chemists, I then go, I have seen x y and z pattern happen is there a chemical reason for that happening. And then they then kind of bring that knowledge in. So actually going into air quality was probably a very natural step. And so that thing that I said 10 years ago about me never going into the chemistry department upon reflection was very naive because actually air quality was yes it is in chemistry. It's a lot of things. So, it gives you new perspective on a broad perspective on how to address the scientific problems of chemistry or quality, but also allows you to kind of address the, I'll communicate to us the needs of other people you're working with in a way. So, how much time left, probably time for a couple more questions. So again this goes back to the kind of complexities we were talking about earlier, and it's well how well can we monitor the monitor pollution in our atmosphere. So from my understanding of how we monitor it is done pretty well. Of course there are going to be discrepancies so the way how most monitoring stations are done is you've got monitoring station at sort of feet. So actually it's like you've got massive tube, and it basically breathes in all of the air quality, and all of the air, and kind of breaks it down chemically, and then after this and then it gives you sort of like an output on how we mean. And then you've then got these sort of monitoring stations across the UK where you've got so example, urban background, urban traffic, rural background. And then there's industrial sources and there's a couple of others as well, but I can't remember the top of my mind. Now, it's very good at being able to monitor us say on the local level so like a plane. But you don't necessarily know what's happening throughout the entire atmosphere, because if you imagine it as a box, you can only see one level, but in order for you to understand what's happening in the full atmosphere. You kind of need to have a monitor station at each level if you don't get. So on the level, it's really good, but in the boundary layer, which is sort of like the entirety of where it's sort of sitting in is very difficult to monitor. That's why, for example, you have flight flight campaigns or you have what are known as IO piece of intense observational periods where you actually even go if there's an area of interest, what is actually happening or saying the entire boundary layer. So recently there was a campaign that happened in Manchester, where they wanted to look at not just say monitoring of air quality but they wanted to look at compositions of aerosol or what's happening in the boundary layer. What's happening with certain sensors was happening with this. It's also improving quite a lot and actually it's also helping our understanding of how we can better monitor air pollution with say potentially different technologies. Okay, and I suppose that you also mentioned there might be. It might just be my primary a discrepancy between how we monitor pollution versus how it actually impacts the population demographics. Yes. Yeah, sure. So in order for you to be classified as an urban background monitoring station, you need to have enough green space or space around that monitoring station in order for you to get a representative representation of what's actually happening in that environment. So what you'll find, for example, is if I am looking at say somewhere like Marlborough Marlborough is very popular in terms of the air quality monitoring space, because it has, like, you know, a lot of green space has all of these areas, but Marlborough is also one of the richest areas of London, for example. So you're trying to then figure out what's happening on an urban background scale, but all of your monitoring stations are in areas that have got really good access to green spaces. You know, traditionally speaking, one of the big problems is that people in low session of clinical classes are not necessarily have the same access to green spaces. So what I'm learning is that because of these requirements for you to have an urban background station, it doesn't necessarily locate to the same areas that have these highest levels of deprivation. So I think this is where citizens can be quite important because you can then go, if we are trying to, for example, do a lot of what I do is sort of like an air quality prediction and in like using machine learning, in order for you to have something for the machine to learn on, you need data. So if you kind of basically trained your data on something that has already got this bias in this sort of spatial distribution, then your predictions aren't going to be capturing what could potentially actually be happening. So something that I want to look at in the future, fingers crossed, is to look at say, okay, we use citizen science to actually collect data in areas that we are aware have these high levels of pollution. And compare that to see what's happening with urban background stations, would there be a difference in predictions. So that's what I mean about discrepancies. Okay, so not only is there discrepancies and how the actual pollutants affect people has also discrepancies and how we try and determine solutions from the scientific data we have, we might be following what we seem to consist to be objective scientific data, but actually the solutions we derived from that don't necessarily with what's needed in reality. Okay, so final question as you wrap up. Someone who's interested in pollution, but isn't in your, your area in the area of evolution. How can they get involved or I suppose a phrase phrases could be what the average person do to help. Because citizen science is. Yeah. So, if you are. So I'm going to answer this, assuming that you want to go into air quality research, or if you want to just get involved with air quality stuff. If you want to get involved with air quality stuff, your best bet is to see there are any citizen science projects that are happening. So, one that I know that's currently happening is in Brackford, where they've been getting school kids to be more to monitor different pollutants. I can't remember what the pollutants are from the top of my head. And I'm aware that for example that sort of like looking at improving that from like a public engagement perspective. The other one is one is just to sort of be on like in the lookout in the local area, and also like talk to your MPs because actually if you are concerned about air quality within your given area, your MPs should be the representative of what they bring about the requirements. You can, for example, talk about that and just be like what's going on. So that's happened. So that's how you can sort of get involved in a kind of public side. If you are a scientist or you're trying to get to air quality as a science area. My recommendation is to just look for like reasonable opportunities. So, I got this job. I am now that I'm in now because they wanted a mathematician with an air quality science base. Well, I've also found as well that the reason I kind of got to where I am is that even though I've gotten here for a convoluted route, I've just kind of gone, my passions have been in these areas. And so I found that I am just sort of like following my passion all the way through, which is really corny way of saying it. But you find that if there's an opportunity that uses your right skill set and do it. And also if you do generally want to get to air quality and you've got this background, feel free to just drop me an email and I can see what I can do. So that's like the side. Sure. Thanks so much for that. We are now one minute past that time. So it is time to close this webinar. So say thank you Craig for all your insight today. And thank you for inviting me. Anytime. And yeah, thank you to audience for attending. Yeah, thank you and goodbye.