New paper on coal trains in the Columbia River Gorge.

Its been awhile since I sent out an update on this project, but we've been busy working on the analysis.

As you probably know, we have done three sets of measurements, one in Seattle (2013), one in the Columbia River Gorge (2014) and one in Bellingham (2015).

I am happy to let you know that a new peer reviewed paper on Coal and freight trains in the Columbia River Gorge is being released today. These are from our measurements done there in the summer of 2014. Some of the key findings from this work are:

Open coal train releases nearly twice as much respirable particulate matter (PM2.5) compared to a freight train in the Columbia River Gorge. This additional PM appears to be due to airborne coal dust. In addition, we found that 5.4 percent of all coal trains were “super-dusters,” generating visible dust plumes, captured by video camera, and having the highest concentrations of respirable particulate matter.

The paper and supplemental video files are now available on my website:

 http://www.atmos.washington.edu/jaffegroup/modules/APOLLO

I want to thank everyone who donated to this project via Experiment.com

Without your support, this work would not have happened!

Work on all of the datasets continues and I will keep you updated on further results from this project.

regards

Dan