Peter Adams

Professor and Department Head Carnegie Mellon University

  • Pittsburgh PA

Peter Adams' research largely focuses on the development of chemical transport models and their application to decision-making.

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Carnegie Mellon University

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Biography

Peter Adams is the Thomas Lord Professor of Engineering, Department Head and Professor in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy and Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research largely focuses on the development of chemical transport models and their application to decision-making, especially related to PM2.5. Adams also has extensive expertise in 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 BS degree in Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, from Cornell University. He was awarded a Hertz Foundation Applied Science Fellowship for graduate study and received MS and PhD 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.

Areas of Expertise

Air Quality
Aerosols
Regional Air Quality Modeling
Aerosol Effects on Climate
Atmospheric Particulate Matter
Atmospheric Chemistry

Media Appearances

EPA assembles experts to probe benefits of air rules

E&E News  online

2022-09-26

In an email, Peter Adams, another member of the newly announced panel, on Monday called BenMAP “the de facto standard for assessing health outcomes from air pollution exposures and also how we value those in economic terms.”

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Why Is Ground Level Ozone Bad, But Stratospheric Ozone Is Good?

90.5 WESA  online

2019-07-02

Carnegie Mellon University environmental engineering professor Peter Adams said ozone formation is one of the more complicated topics in atmospheric chemistry. “You need something called volatile organic compounds, which you can think of gasoline vapors and other things like that. You need nitrogen oxides which comes from vehicles and power plants,” Adams said. “You need it to be sunny, and generally you need warmer temperatures.”

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Dirty Air From Global Trade Kills at Home, Abroad, Study Contends

VOA  online

2017-03-29

Production is likely to remain concentrated in Asia, however, and it will have to be up to those countries to better regulate their own industrial emissions, said Peter Adams, an engineering professor and air pollution expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who wasn't part of the study. "Relying on consumer altruism," he said, won't be enough.

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Social

Industry Expertise

Chemicals
Public Policy
Education/Learning
Research

Accomplishments

Lyman A. Ripperton Environmental Educator Award

2019

Carnegie Mellon University Teaching Innovation Award

2019

Education

California Institute of Technology

M.S.

Chemical Engineering

1998

California Institute of Technology

Ph.D.

Chemical Engineering

2001

Cornell University

B.S.

Chemical Engineering

1996

Affiliations

  • Air and Waste Management Association (AWMA): member
  • American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR): member, past Internet Committee chair, By-Laws Committee
  • American Geophysical Union (AGU)
  • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • European Geosciences Union (EGU)

Event Appearances

Reduced-Complexity Models (RCMs) for Air Quality Impact Assessment: A Tutorial”

Community Modeling and Analysis System  

An Introduction to Reduced-Complexity Models for Air Quality

18th Annual Community Modeling and Analysis (CMAS) Conference  

Process-based ammonia emissions inventories from livestock: status and needs

National Atmospheric Deposition Program TDep Workshop  

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Articles

Optimizing Emissions Reductions from the U.S. Power Sector for Climate and Health Benefits

Environmental Science & Technology

2020

Improved air quality and human health are often discussed as “co-benefits” of mitigating climate change, yet they are rarely considered when designing or implementing climate policies. We analyze the implications of integrating health and climate when determining the best locations for replacing power plants with new wind, solar, or natural gas to meet a CO2 reduction target in the United States.

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Spatial decomposition analysis of NO2 and PM2.5 air pollution in the United States

Atmospheric Environment

2020

Length scales for spatial variability of air pollution concentrations depend on the pollutant and the location. In this paper, we develop a readily scalable algorithm based on “spatial-increment”, to decompose the air pollution concentration into four spatial components: long-range, mid-range, neighborhood, and near-source.

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Spatial Correlation of Ultrafine Particle Number and Fine Particle Mass at Urban Scales: Implications for Health Assessment

Environmental Science & Technology

2020

The epidemiological evidence for ultrafine particles (UFP; particles with diameter

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