Daniel Westervelt
Westervelt, an associate research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, studies air pollution and climate. For his project, he's developing a real-time air pollution-monitoring network for three growing megacities in sub-Saharan Africa.
This region of Africa is among the world’s most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change and air pollution, yet the environmental monitoring needed to develop solutions to these problems is lacking. Westervelt will deploy air pollution monitors to continuously measure pollutants such as fine particulate matter in three growing megacities: Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Kampala, Uganda; and Nairobi, Kenya. These represent the first measurements of air pollution in Kinshasa and some of the first for Kampala and Nairobi.
The resulting data will create detailed measurements of the anthropogenic agents that are responsible for air pollution-related climate impacts and enable local governments to take actions to protect human and environmental health and plan for a sustainable future.