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Jason  West, Ph.D., M.Phil., M.S. - UNC-Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill, NC, UNITED STATES

Jason West, Ph.D., M.Phil., M.S.

Assistant Professor, Environmental Sciences & Engineering | UNC-Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, NC, UNITED STATES

Dr. West is interested broadly in the problems of air pollution and climate change

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Biography

Dr. West received a BS in Engineering from Duke University in 1993, an MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1994, an M.Phil. in Environment and Development from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1995, and a PhD from the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in 1998.

Dr. West has held several appointments since completion of his PhD, including postdoctoral fellowships at Carnegie Mellon and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was selected as an AAAS Environmental Fellow to work at the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC on international transport of air pollutants and on climate change. His most recent position was at Princeton University, where he served as associate research scholar working on global atmospheric chemistry modelling.

Dr. West is interested broadly in the problems of air pollution and climate change, with the goal of exploring the relationships between these problems and the relevance of these relationships for environmental science and policy. Using computer models of atmospheric chemistry, Dr. West is interested in exploring the effects of changes in emissions on global air quality, the international transport of air pollutants (focusing on ozone and particulate matter), and the radiative forcing of climate. Recently, his research has emphasized methane emissions. Methane is an important greenhouse gas that also reacts in the atmosphere to contribute to ozone air pollution, but abatement of methane is not generally considered for ozone air quality management. Dr. West showed that the global benefits of reduced ozone and avoided premature human mortalities exceed the costs of a 20% reduction in global anthropogenic methane emissions. In the future, he plans to explore how goals of improving air quality and slowing greenhouse warming can be achieved simultaneously. Dr. West will also be active in teaching, beginning with a course on the broad problem of climate change, covering the science, impacts, economics, technology, and policy aspects of this important problem.

Industry Expertise (2)

Education/Learning

Research

Areas of Expertise (5)

Climate Change

Air Pollution

Environmental Decision Analysis

Global Health

The Environment

Education (4)

Carnegie Mellon University: Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering / Engineering and Public Policy 1998

University of Cambridge: MPhil, Environment and Development 1995

Carnegie Mellon University: MS, Civil and Environmental Engineering 1994

Duke University: BSE, Civil and Environmental Engineering 1993

Articles (5)

Global Air Quality and Health Co-benefits of Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change through Methane and Black Carbon Emission Controls application/pdf Download Full Text


Environmental Health Perspectives

2015 ABSTRACT: Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC), a component of fine particulate matter (PM ≤ 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter; PM:2.5), are associated with premature mortality and they disrupt global and regional climate. Objectives: We examined the air quality and health benefits of 14 specific emission control measures targeting BC and methane, an ozone precursor, that were selected because of their potential to reduce the rate of climate change over the next 20–40 years.

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Scenarios of methane emission reductions to 2030: abatement costs and co-benefits to ozone air quality and human mortality


Climatic Change

2012 ABSTRACT: Methane emissions contribute to global baseline surface ozone concentrations; therefore reducing methane to address climate change has significant co-benefits for air quality and human health...

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Characterizing the tropospheric ozone response to methane emission controls and the benefits to climate and air quality


Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

2008 ABSTRACT: Reducing methane (CH4) emissions is an attractive option for jointly addressing climate and ozone (O3) air quality goals. With multidecadal full-chemistry transient simulations in the MOZART-2 tropospheric chemistry model, we show that tropospheric O3 responds approximately linearly to changes in CH4 emissions over a range of anthropogenic emissions from 0–430 Tg CH4 a−1 (0.11–0.16 Tg tropospheric O3 or ∼11–15 ppt global mean surface O3 decrease per Tg a−1 CH4 reduced)...

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Global health benefits of mitigating ozone pollution with methane emission controls


Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2006 ABSTRACT: Methane (CH 4) contributes to the growing global background concentration of tropospheric ozone (O 3), an air pollutant associated with premature mortality. Methane and ozone are also important greenhouse gases. Reducing methane emissions therefore ...

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Marginal PM25: nonlinear aerosol mass response to sulfate reductions in the Eastern United States


Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association

1999 ABSTRACT: Reductions in airborne sulfate concentration may cause inorganic fine particulate matter (PM25) to respond nonlinearly, as nitric acid gas may transfer to the aerosol phase. Where this occurs, reductions in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions will be ...

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