Dylan B. Millet
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dbm.bsky.social
Dylan B. Millet
@dbm.bsky.social

Atmospheric chemist | 🇨🇦🇺🇸 but mostly 🇨🇦 | Distinguished McKnight University Prof @ U Minnesota

Environmental science 51%
Geography 18%
Out this week in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science: VCPs, biogenic VOCs and traditional anthropogenic PM respond to heat and smoke to drive summer PM pollution outside NYC, highlighting vulnerabilities of urban air quality under global change. @chemdelphine.bsky.social @dbm.bsky.social
Emerging drivers of urban aerosol increase global change vulnerability in a US megacity
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science - Emerging drivers of urban aerosol increase global change vulnerability in a US megacity
rdcu.be

For sale, one sonic anemometer, lightly used
@NASA and @caltech.edu kineticist extraordinaire Stan Sander died Saturday night surrounded by his family. Stan was a kind mentor, inventive scientist and engineer. He will be sorely missed by me and many colleagues around the world.

Reposted by Dylan B. Millet

Some memes are relatable they aren’t even like funny, just actively insulting.

Reposted by Dylan B. Millet

Reposted by Colette L. Heald

A letter in Science about the importance of NASA Earth Science from several members of the recently-dissolved NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee.

Out today online and in the 7/24 issue.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency.

Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.
Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency
White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted
www.science.org

Reposted by Colette L. Heald

And announced today, Stan was selected as one of the 2024 class of AAAS Fellows:
www.aaas.org/programs/fel...

Even though it only just became public, selections were made back in November so Stan did find out at that point.
2024 AAAS Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
www.aaas.org

Sometimes you *should* meet your (science) heroes. Stan was a giant of chemical kinetics and just a gem of a person. We will miss him.
@NASA and @caltech.edu kineticist extraordinaire Stan Sander died Saturday night surrounded by his family. Stan was a kind mentor, inventive scientist and engineer. He will be sorely missed by me and many colleagues around the world.

Folks on this platform will readily think of many other examples. This type of research gives us information we need for smart, informed planning. We can have good-faith policy arguments about what to *do*, but choosing to be uninformed by not collecting data … is just failure.

… and revealed the rising importance of non-transportation emissions for urban air quality.
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Volatile chemical products emerging as largest petrochemical source of urban organic emissions
Chemical products contribute as much organic air pollution as transportation emissions in many cities.
www.science.org

… showed how declining transportation emissions have reduced smog (psst, the Clean Air Act works!) …
doi.org/10.1029/2012...
Multiyear trends in volatile organic compounds in Los Angeles, California: Five decades of decreasing emissions
VOCs and CO have decreased by a large factor in LA since 1960s VOC emission ratios have not changed Rate of decrease in London is more rapid, but started later
doi.org

There has been way too much groundbreaking research from CSL to mention it all here. A couple examples that often come up in my work:

CSL research helped show the role that natural VOCs play in ozone pollution (changes control strategies!) …
www.nature.com/articles/329...
Models and observations of the impact of natural hydrocarbons on rural ozone - Nature
Nature - Models and observations of the impact of natural hydrocarbons on rural ozone
www.nature.com

CSL is a NOAA lab that has been foundational in atmospheric chemistry & air quality science. They are now losing young scientists that are among the best/brightest of the next generation. This degrades not just CSL but our ability to track pollution & protect health.
csl.noaa.gov
NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory
NOAA CSL: Advancing scientific understanding of the chemical and physical processes that affect Earth's atmospheric composition and climate.
csl.noaa.gov

These were *volunteer* science advisory committees that provided NASA with independent perspective and community guidance ... explain to me how eliminating these is a way to "reduce waste and abuse"

Reposted by Dylan B. Millet

The #standupforscience2025 rallies will be held in DC and around the U.S. NEXT FRIDAY.

Please sign up to attend at standupforscience2025.org

To effectively push back the attacks on science happening now, it is so critical to show mass support for science by gathering together in the streets!

🧪
Stand Up for Science rallies will be held in DC and state capitals on March 7th. Share with friends. Sign-up here to get email updates with details: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE 2025 - DC and NATIONWIDE
Stand up for science with us on March 7th, 2025, because science is for everyone! More info at www.standupforscience2025.org
www.eventbrite.com
Do you want a big overview of NSF, explaining things like the fact that 24% of all federally funded academic fundamental research comes from NSF? And that 94% of its budget goes out the door in grants/awards? Here you go. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/Factsh...

Reposted by Dylan B. Millet

These are the people who monitor and publish Lake Superior's conditions every day. Minnesotans along the North Shore rely on NOAA to know whether or not it’s safe to go out on the water.

These agencies and their staff do real work that keeps us safe, it just goes unnoticed - until they’re gone.

🧪 The Water Resources Center wrc.umn.edu at the University of Minnesota is looking for a new director. Come be my colleague! Application info here: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/366...
Water Resources Center | Water Resources Center
wrc.umn.edu

🤮 No respect for anyone using genAI to write reviews. If you don't have time to write an actual review, just decline the invitation! Sorry you're dealing with that nonsense

Reposted by Dylan B. Millet

youtu.be/co7gJJHf6IQ

Wonderful explanation of Euler’s Equation and foundation for Fourier transforms
Euler’s Equation’s Beauty Explained
YouTube video by Ali the Dazzling
youtu.be

A great collaboration with @chemdelphine.bsky.social, @chemj.bsky.social, @timothybertram.bsky.social, @profdesai.bsky.social, and others not on bluesky.

@mvermeuel.bsky.social has moved on and is now Ass’t Prof at Purdue, watch for cool research from his new group!
7/7

5) Curiously, current atmospheric models already tend to overpredict atmospheric ozone. So if they are also overestimating ozone deposition, this means there must be other, larger (partly offsetting!) problems with our ozone models. More research is needed 🤓
6/7

3) Ozone-driven plant phytoxicity due to ozone is also overestimated, by up to 7x!
4) Chemical reactions inside forest canopies has been proposed to be one important ozone loss mechanism. But @mvermeuel.bsky.social shows that this is trivial for the 3 forest types examined
5/7

Some interesting results: 1) the normal “big-leaf” treatment used widely in models like GEOS-Chem overpredict ozone deposition to forests by 2x! 2) These models also do not reproduce observed variability, implying that they do not capture underlying mechanisms that will control future change.
4/7

Standard atmospheric models simulate this deposition in a very rudimentary way, by treating 3D canopies as one big leaf. @mvermeuel.bsky.social combined a resolved-canopy model, a 3D atmospheric model, and atmospheric data to better understand the ozone deposition process over 3 forests
3/7