Peter Adams

Department Head, Engineering and Public Policy
Director, Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy
Thomas Lord Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering and Public Policy

Bio

Peter Adams is a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University. Adams’ research largely focuses on development of chemical transport models, especially the simulation of aerosol microphysical processes, ultrafine particles, and the formation of cloud condensation nuclei in global climate models. Areas of research have also included the effects of climate change on air quality, short-lived climate forcers, atmospheric ammonia and particulate matter formation from livestock operations, and the simulation organic particulate matter.

Adams was selected for a Fulbright grant to collaborate with researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Bologna, has been a Visiting Senior Research Scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center, and received the Sheldon K. Friedlander Award for outstanding doctoral thesis from the American Association for Aerosol Research. He has previously served on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee and the Allegheny County Health Department’s Air Toxics New Guidelines Proposal Committee, as well as service to the American Association for Aerosol Research. His research is supported primarily by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense.

Adams received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, from Cornell University. He was awarded a Hertz Foundation Applied Science Fellowship for graduate study and received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He also holds an associated faculty position in the Chemical Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon.

Research

Adams' research focuses on climatic effects of atmospheric particulate matter (aerosols), global and regional models of atmospheric chemistry, and air quality in developing countries.

Research Group: EESS
Research Center: CAPS, CEDM

Areas of Interest

• Climatic effects of atmospheric particulate matter (aerosols)
• Global and regional models of atmospheric chemistry
• Air quality in developing countries

Aerosol Effects on Climate

Anthropogenic aerosols cool the earth's climate by reflecting sunlight back to space and by serving as nuclei for cloud droplet formation. Their net effect has been to partially offset global warming from greenhouse gases, but uncertainty in the magnitude of this effect has complicated the assessment and forecasting of climate change. Research in this area focuses on improving the representation of aerosols in global climate, chemistry, and transport models by incorporating size-resolved aerosol microphysics and thermodynamics and testing these improved aerosol models against observations from ground networks, intensive field campaigns, and satellites. Other work examines how aerosols influence cloud reflectivity in small-scale, detailed simulations of cloud formation.

Regional Air Quality Modeling

Regional air quality models are being developed that predict the concentrations of ozone and particulate matter resulting from a given set of emissions. Specific goals in this area of research are to improve the computational efficiency of air quality models such that multi-year time periods can be simulated, better constrain the emissions of ammonia through inverse modeling, and examine the costs and benefits of air pollution controls and future energy policies in developed and developing countries.