April - May 2002: ITCT 2K2, Trinidad Head, California, USA

The AMS was fielded alongside one belonging to ARI. The experiment is designed to study Intercontinental Transport and Chemical Transformation  (ITCT) of pollution from the Pacific. This is funded by NOAA. This experiment provided an opportunity to test some prototype upgrades to the instruments, including a light scattering probe, a temperature controlled inlet and a hot oven for studying sea salt.

July - September 2002: NAMBLEX, Mace Head, Republic of Ireland

North Atlantic Marine Boundary Layer EXperiment. UMIST, along with other groups from Britain and Ireland, fielded many bits of kit, including the AMS, to study boundary layer transport off the Atlantic Ocean. This was funded by NERC.

March - April 2003: QUEST 2, Hyytiälä, Finland
A forest experiment in Finland designed to look at the nucleation phenomena observed there in detail. The AMS was again fielded, only this time with the new beam shape probe and a temperature controlled inlet. This was funded by Markku Kulmala at the University of Helsinki.

March 2004: CLACE 3, Jungfraujoch, Switzerland

An aerosol-cloud interaction study at 'The Top of Europe' (as the tourist speil would have us believe). Bloody freezing, but we got to use some state of the art cloud microphysics gear and used the AMS to compare the interstitial and residual aerosol.

July - August 2004: ITCT 2K4/ICARTT, Chebogue Point, Nova Scotia, Canada

Part of the larger ICARTT experiment (which included ITOP), this was studying the American continental emissions as they left across the Atlantic.
CBC even gave us some screen time. Check it out.

November - December 2004: RICO-PRACS, Puerto Rico, USA.
A tropical aerosol-cloud interaction study, performed as part of the larger RICO project in the region. Other groups involved included the University of Puerto Rico, UNAM, NOAA CMDL, MPI Mainz and IFT Leipzig.

February - March 2005: CLACE 4, Jungfraujoch, Switzerland.
I couldn't stay away, could I?

 

Gotta be a record for the largest number of aerosol mass spectrometers in one field project at once. Four AMSs (two with C-TOFs, two with H-TOFs), three ATOFMSs (one with a bipolar C-TOF), the TDPBMS and the Berkeley TAG. Didn't get much time to play though; I was hard at work programming the HDF5-based analysis software.

 

Taking baseline measurements ahead of the main event scheduled for the summer. First outing for our new C-TOF.

Published Work

This has now been moved to my page on the SEAES website.

---

Conferences Attended
(where you might have bumped into me)

 

AAAR, Austin, TX, USA, 17^th-21^st October 2005.

GRC Atmospheric Chemistry, Big Sky, MO, USA, 4^th-9^th September 2005.

ACCESS VIII, Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA, 1^st-4^th September 2005.

EAC, Ghent, Belgium, 28^th August-2^nd September 2005.
RSC Faraday Discussions 130: Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Leeds, UK, 11^th-13^th April 2005.
IGAC Specialty Conference on the Indirect Effects of Aerosols on Climate, University of Manchester, UK, 5^th-7^th January 2005.
AAAR, Atlanta, GA, USA, 4^th-8^th October 2004.
GRC Biogenic Hydrocarbons & the Atmosphere, Il Ciocco, Italy, 2^nd-7^th May 2004.
The Aerosol Society AGM, UMIST, UK, 14^th-15^th April 2004.
Aerosols in the UTLS Workshop, St. Hugh's College, Oxford, UK, 18^th-19^th December 2003.
AAAR, Anaheim, CA, USA, 20^th-24^th October 2003.
Royal Meteorological Society, University of East Anglia, UK, 1^st-5^th September 2003.
AAAR, Charlotte, NC, USA, 6^th-11^th October 2002.
The Aerosol Society AGM, University of Bath, UK, 18 ^th -19^th June 2001.

PhD Thesis

This is the final, final version of my thesis, the one submitted to the university. If you've downloaded a version earlier than 11/1/5, I'd receommend downloading it again. There was a minor mess up with the paper size (the good old letter vs A4 thing) and I've also installed a newer version of Ghostscript, so the files are much smaller now.

An Aerosol Mass Spectrometer: Instrument Development, Data Analysis Techniques and Quantitative Atmospheric Particulate Measurements
A thesis submitted to UMIST for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (2004)

Complete version (12Mb)

In case that's a bit to huge, here are the separate chapters, although I'd recommend having the whole, as there is a lot of cross-referencing.
Chapter 0 - Preface (including abstract) (37Kb)
Chapter 1 - Introduction (880Kb)
Chapter 2.1 - The AMS (70Kb)
Chapter 2.2 - Hardware Development (184Kb)
Chapter 2.3 - Calibration & Quantification (81Kb)
Chapter 2.4 - Analysis Software Development (265Kb)
Chapter 2.5 -Validation (232Kb)
Chapter 3.1 - Urban Studies (6.48Mb)
Chapter 3.2 - MBL Studies (3.91Mb)
Chapter 3.3 - Atmospheric Processing of Organics (111Kb)
Chapter 4 - Summary (101Kb)
Chapter 5 - Appendices (including references) (217Kb)

Stuff on the Horizon

Will be at Mexico City for MILAGRO. Most of my time will be spent at either the Paso Del Cortez or

Contact/Links

Back in J1 again. But at least the ceiling is fixed now and I got to keep my swivel chair.

Please note that the physics.org address should still be considered dead. I'll still be getting emails sent to the old address (I hope) but you have a much better chance of getting through with my manchester.ac.uk address.

email: james.allan@manchester.ac.uk
Office: +44 (0)161 306 2490
Mobile: +44 (0)7779 003739
Fax. +44 (0)161 306 3951

Address:
School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Science
The University of Manchester
Sackville Street Building
PO Box 88
Manchester
M60 1QD
UK

Links relevant my work:
Note: I'm not responsible for the content of the sites on any of the links here or anywhere else on this page. Well, maybe the first one, but you know what I mean. These are also purely for information, so I'm not advertising, recommending on behalf of the University of Manchester or doing anything else that might get me into trouble (I hope). If any of the links are dead, give me an email.

My Igor Pro Files
Jose's AMS web page
(Excellent resource for all things AMS-related.)
Natural Environmental Research Council
National Centres for Atmospheric Research
The Distributed Institute for Atmospheric Composition
(The ones who pay for me.)
Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Research
Aerodyne Research Inc.
(The guys who made the AMS.)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
ACE-Asia Official Website
Pacific 2001 Public Website
ITCT 2K2 Website
QUEST Public Website
Institute of Physics
Wavemetrics Inc.
(The guys who made Igor Pro)
NGDC coastline generator
(Very handy resource if you ever have to make map plots)
British Atmospheric Data Centre
UK National Air Quality Information Archive
(Contains air quality statistics and data from automated monitoring stations in the UK)
NIST Chemistry WebBook
(Mass spectra, kinetic data, structures and anything else you might want to know about any chemical)
Web of Knowledge
(Formerly web of science)
CutePDF Writer
(A freeware, no-nonsense pdf printer that actually works. Most of the time. See above.)


Non-academic links:
Or what I do when I'm not working.


(Best news site in the world.)


(No explanation necessary.)


(Movie geek heaven!)


My Favourite Web Comics:
i.e. what keeps me sane when the workload piles up. Or vice versa depending on your point of view.


 

Best viewed with any old piece of crap. If you can read this, you're not missing anything. However, in my personal opinion, Firefox rules, so you should get that.