From HAQAST Team Leader

Greetings from HAQAST! The past few months have been a whirlwind of activity ramping up the NASA Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team. We had a fantastic “HAQAST1” meeting in early November in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by Yang Liu and Emory University. You’ll find a write-up of the meeting below, as well as an invitation and reminder to register for HAQAST2, near the campus of University of Washington in Seattle, and hosted Jeremy Hess and Susan O’Neill. I’m also pleased to introduce our new HAQAST.org website, Twitter handle (@NASA_HAQAST), and exciting research news. Hope to see you in Seattle!

All the best, 

An assessment of AQAST’s impact was recently published!  See Milford, Jana B. and Daniel Knight, “Increasing the Use of Earth Science Data and Models in Air Quality Management,” Journal of Air and Waste Management Association http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3PAmVdSYgiRaIxZknzvi/full

West, Jason, et al. “What We Breathe Impacts Our Health: Improving Understanding of the Link between Air Pollution and Health,” Environmental Science and Technology, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b03827



Daven Henze coauthored a paper on the climate and health impacts of cookstoves. Lacey, Forest et al. "Transient climate and ambient health impacts due to national solid fuel cookstove emissions," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/17/1612430114.full?sid=fef93efd-0072-48d0-b41d-8aceaba5487b

Reflection on HAQAST1
 
This past November 3-4, HAQAST members, stakeholders, NASA program officers, and interested members of the public health and air quality communities met at the beautiful Emory University for two days of networking, planning, and collaboration. The first day was reserved for HAQAST members to begin charting the course of our three-year effort, while day two was an open meeting devoted to bringing public stakeholders and HAQAST members together.
 
The HAQAST Program Manager for Health and Air Quality Applications, John Haynes, provided background on the selection process and team mission. Every member, he said, ran a “very impressive mini-team,” and together we were “a whole greater than the sum of its parts.” Team Lead Tracey Holloway outlined the vision for HAQAST to broaden applications of satellite data and other NASA science, and HAQAST Member Bryan Duncan reflected on “lessons learned” from the success of the 2011-2016 Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (AQAST).
 
“What are the key things we’re going to focus on?” asked Lawrence Friedl, Director of NASA’s Applied Sciences Program. His answer was clear: "HAQAST’s mission is to bring the power of NASA’s satellites down to earth and into the hands of the public health and air quality communities."  HAQAST members need to be “in listening mode,” Friedl said, and the three keywords that should characterize HAQAST’s work over the next three years are creativity, agility, and service. Friedl went on to give the room a wide variety of avenues for triangulating between NASA, our research community, and the public.

Day two featured a series of presentations from NASA, health and air quality stakeholders - including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and HAQAST researchers. HAQAST 1 Stakeholder talks.
 
It was a full, productive meeting, and it built plenty of energy for HAQAST2, February 27 – 28, 2017 at the University of Washington.
  
Finally, special thanks to Yang Liu for organizing HAQAST1.

HAQAST in the News
 

Phys.org quotes HAQAST member Daven Henze regarding the local and global impacts of air quality research.

HAQAST Program Manager John Haynes spoke about our new team on NASA Applied Sciences Website (HAQAST part begins at 3:30) 

Recent newsworthy achievements are also featured on HAQAST.org

At the November 17th at the NASA GSFC Air Quality & Health Showcase, Bryan Duncan (HAQAST) and Steven Pawson (NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office) met with three representatives from UNICEF (Nick Rees, Toby Wicks, and David Anthony) and a health expert (Kevin Cromar, NYU) to lay plans for the development of a satellite-based air pollution index (API) and API forecast capability that will be specifically tailored to health issues of children, such as child asthma.  The 10-day API forecasts from GMAO's atmospheric model will be used by UNICEF to alert subscribers of imminent poor air quality via email and text.  The forecasts will also be made available via a cellular phone application.

NASA’s GeoCARB Satellite launched! 

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