Christine Wiedinmyer is an American atmospheric chemist who is a research scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry Division of the

National Center for Atmospheric Research The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundat ...

. She has a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

. Wiedinmyer developed the Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN), "a high resolution global fire emissions model now used by local, regional, and global chemical modelers to better quantify the impacts of fire emissions on atmospheric composition, both in hindsight and forecast model applications." She used the model to estimate that the

2010 Russian wildfires The 2010 Russian wildfires were several hundred wildfires that broke out across Russia, primarily in the west in summer 2010. They started burning in late July and lasted until early September 2010. The fires were associated with record-high t ...

liberated 22 teragrams of

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a poisonous, flammable gas that is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the si ...

, though this amount was less than the cumulative carbon monoxide emissions of 2012 and 2003. Wiedinmyer discovered that in the long run,

controlled burning A controlled burn or prescribed burn (Rx burn) is the practice of intentionally setting a fire to change the assemblage of vegetation and decaying material in a landscape. The purpose could be for forest management, ecological restoration, ...

of forests will produce up to sixty percent less

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

emissions compared to the full-fledged

wildfires A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

they prevented.

Undergrowth In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but above ...

will be destroyed by the controlled burns while carbon-rich mature trees survive. Without removing the undergrowth, wildfires can quickly escalate out of control using the undergrowth as fuel, and then burn down mature trees as well. Wiedinmyer is also a co-founder of the

Earth Science Women's Network Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is c ...

(ESWN).

References

External links

Christine Wiedinmyer's expert profile on the UCAR websiteList of Christine Wiedinmyer's publications, ResearchGate
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiedinmyer, Christine Living people 21st-century American chemists Atmospheric chemists Tulane University alumni Cockrell School of Engineering alumni American women chemists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women scientists