Capacity Building in Latin America
Contributed by E.W. Bierly and C.J. Gilman, American Geophysical Union, USA; E. San Roman, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina; R. Morales, Universidad de Chile; and T. Tavares, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Reprinted from IGACtivities Newsletter No. 8, March 1997.

Some years ago it was recognized by several international research programs that there was great need for people who understood atmospheric chemistry. Simultaneously, there was a recognition within the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) program of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that atmospheric chemists would be needed to assure that the measurement and observational activities at its newly constructed baseline stations were carried out correctly. In addition, there was recognition that in order to carry out the various analyses that are needed, well trained and educated atmospheric chemists would be required in the countries where these new stations were located. All six of the stations except the station built on the Tibetan plateau were in countries where there was little, if any, capability to carry out the required program. See Figure 1 for the location of the stations.



Figure 1. Map showing locations of WMO/GAW baseline stations. The six new stations are labeled.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) decided after consultation with personnel from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program's (IGBP) START (SysTem for Analysis, Research, and Training) Secretariat, IGAC and IGAC's Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Educational in Global Change (ACEED) Activity, WMO's GAW, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), to request funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to run an experiment in Latin America where two of the new GAW baseline stations were being built. The experiment was to give short courses in subjects that were of great need for operators and managers of the stations in an effort to entice personnel into the system and then try to keep them involved through graduate and undergraduate education.

The proposal was funded by the Atmospheric Chemistry Program in the Atmospheric Sciences Division and the Inter-American Institute (IAI) for Global Change Research. At the first meeting of the Steering Committee, when scientists from South America came to talk about courses and their content, it became apparent that any such course would draw many university students and faculty who wanted to add atmospheric chemistry to their knowledge base or to courses already being taught in environmental sciences, chemistry, physics, materials science, etc. It also became clear that such courses would attract personnel who had regulatory and management responsibilities. Finally, it was decided to provide courses that were needed not only in support of the GAW, but in support of the many and varied needs of programs in atmospheric chemistry. Thus ACEED could play a much greater role than had been previously thought.

The general formats for the courses were developed by experts in the U.S. with help from scientists in South America. The AGU and IUPAC advertised for atmospheric chemists who would be willing to travel and teach for several days or even up to a month or more. This Volunteer Teaching Corps has grown to 182 scientists. The concept was to use these volunteers to teach the courses, pay them for their travel and per diem, and provide travel and per diem support for the participants of the courses also. This was what did occur.

The continuing goal of this effort is to develop an integrated approach to academic capacity building in atmospheric chemistry in cooperation with multinational research, monitoring, and assessment programs with the participation of an international cadre of volunteer scientists. Its specific objectives are to:
  • Coordinate international recruitment efforts.

  • Establish and maintain a Steering Committee in charge of curriculum design. Two closely linked thrusts are envisioned for the early phase of the overall project:

    => Training courses for science faculty who want to introduce an atmospheric chemistry component as an undergraduate program.

    => Selection and outline of undergraduate courses that can be implemented at participating universities.

  • Obtain existing information on atmospheric chemistry curricula, short courses, and textbooks.

  • Define a detailed outline of courses and their contents.

  • Prepare proposals to be submitted to international funding agencies to establish a continuing global education and training program in atmospheric chemistry.
This capacity building effort was first implemented in Latin America as an experiment to see if it were feasible to carry out such an endeavor. To date there have been three short courses given under the auspices of this program. Summaries of the three follow.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

The first IGAC ACEED/GAW short course was held at theInstituto de Quimica Fisica de los Materiales, Medio Ambiente y Energia (INQUIMAE) at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, from 30 October to 10 November 1995. The course, organized and taught by atmospheric chemists, physicists and meteorologists from Argentina and the United States, focused primarily on atmospheric chemistry measurements and instrumentation. The organizers included some background study of atmospheric chemistry to help students understand why such measurements are needed and useful. The syllabus covered topics related to basic atmospheric chemistry processes, instrumentation, and interpretation of atmospheric chemistry data. The course outline is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Outline for the Buenos Aires Short Course.

I. Introduction and descriptive atmospheric chemistry
A. Statement of the "problem" - Local, regional and global influences on the atmosphere by human activities: Examples - urban air pollution, global CH4, CO2, and CFC increases, stratospheric O3 loss

B. Atmospheric fundamentals, thermal and pressure structure, the natural atmosphere, role of OH, units

C. Know your pollutants: Sources, sinks and lifetimes for some of the most important species (e.g. CO, CH4, NMHCs, NOX, O3, SO2, PM-10, Pb)

D. Global biogeochemical cycles (e.g. C, O, N, S)

E. Rationale for measuring pollutants: Developing scientific hypotheses, monitoring for trends, human health effects, and ecosystem damage as input to environmental decision-making
II. Overview of the measurement system
A. Sampling

B. Measurements
III. Spectroscopic measurement techniques
A. Absorption spectroscopy, Beer-Lambert law, applications and limitations

B. Emission spectroscopy
IV. Aerosol and precipitation chemistry
A. Importance of aerosol and precipitation chemistry: human health issues and ecosystem impacts

B. Aerosol chemistry

C. Precipitation chemistry: All of the above techniques plus pH and conductivity
V. Important meteorological concepts to interpret chemical measurements
A. The atmospheric boundary layer

B. Synoptic patterns

C. Local and regional flow

D. Back-trajectory calculations
VI. Data assessment I - answering scientific questions with atmospheric chemical data

VII. Gas chromatography
A. General principles

B. Sampling

C. Specific detectors:

D. In-situ continuous measurements vs. collection methods Examples - contribution of natural NMHCs to urban smog and/or quantifying natural emissions of NMHCs; measurements of tailpipe CO with GC-TCD and the typical distribution of automotive CO emissions (10% of the cars put out more than 50% of the CO).
VIII. Computerized data acquisition
A. Advantages, sampling rates, common problems

B. Specific equipment
IX. Fundamentals of QA/QC
A. Data quality objectives (accuracy, precision, completeness, comparability and representativeness)

B. Calibration principles

C. Reference methods

D. Intercomparisons (examples)
X. Data assessment II - Using atmospheric chemistry measurements to answer specific questions

There were 35 participants from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The group included graduate students, technicians, post-docs, and university teachers all of whom wanted to know or had a need to know more about atmospheric chemistry. Differences in the participants' background knowledge made teaching the course a challenge.

In planning the course, there were some concerns about language. The ACEED/GAW Steering Committee decided that the course should be taught in Spanish to accommodate the participants. While all the lecturers spoke Spanish to some degree, the fluency of the four U.S. lecturers varied. To help overcome this problem, all of the lecturers prepared detailed lecture notes in Spanish that were distributed to the participants in advance. In practice the lectures were primarily in Spanish. Discussion and answers to questions were mostly in English. Most participants did not find this to be a problem.

Overall, the course went extremely well. The program was evaluated by the participants. These evaluations are a part of the full report on the course. The participants were enthusiastic and eager to learn. Class hours were long, from 09.00 to 17.00 with breaks for coffee and lunch. All participants and lecturers ate lunch together, thus affording an opportunity for interaction. A combination of lectures, problem sets and group exercises, and some laboratory work was used in the course.

Of special interest to the participants were the segments in which course participants with some experience in atmospheric chemistry made presentations. Those participants were asked to present a short overview of their work. Hearing and knowing about ongoing activities in South America was extremely beneficial to the class. More time should have been scheduled for such presentations. The participants also enjoyed problem solving exercises, especially those involving group participation. The laboratory/instrumentation work was restricted due to the availability of a limited number of instruments.

A supplemental grant from the IAI and the grant from NSF provided support for the participants' travel and per diem expenses. The NSF grant also paid travel and expenses for the lecturers.

Santiago, Chile

The second ACEED/GAW short course was held at the Center of Environmental Chemistry of the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile, 3-14 June 1996. The course focused primarily on "Photochemical Air Quality Modeling". The organizers and lecturers were physical and atmospheric chemists, mathematicians, and statisticians. The syllabus covered topics related to photochemistry and modeling, air quality assessment, and atmospheric chemistry. The course outline is shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Outline for the Santiago Short Course

I. Photochemical aspects of air quality modeling
A. Photochemistry of atmospheric species

B. Theoretical and experimental determination of solar actinic flux and of photolytic rate constants

C. Principals of chemical kinetics and laboratory studies of atmospheric reactions

D. Smog chamber experimentation and its role in chemical mechanism development

E. Chemistry of nitrogen oxides

F. Chemistry of volatile organic compounds and natural hydrocarbons

G. Reactivity scales and characterization of ozone production capacity in the atmosphere

H. Explicit and condensed mechanisms of the chemistry of polluted atmospheres
II. Emission inventories and air quality modeling
A. Overview of the distribution of precursor emissions

B. Basic principals in emission inventory development
III. Air quality observations and their role in urban AQ modeling
A. Initial and boundary conditions

B. Performance testing and evaluation
IV. Meteorological observations and their role in urban AQ modeling
A. Meteorological observations: Surface and upper air

B. Objective wind field analysis approaches

C. Mixed layer heights
V. Fundamental process components of air quality simulation models
A. Carbon Bond IV vs. RADM2 chemical modules

B. Photolytic and temperature dependent rate constants

C. Dry deposition

D. PBL dynamics
VI. An overview of operational approaches used in ozone AQ management
A. EKMA

B. Urban Airshed Model

C. Regional oxidant models
VII. Description and application of a photochemical box model (PBM)
A. PBM formulation and process modules B. Preparation of meteorological and air quality/emissions data files for the PBM

C. Example applications of the PBM

D. Analysis of results and performance evaluation techniques
VIII. PBM applications laboratory
A. Hands on application of the PBM

B. Sample applications developed from data sets provided by participants

C. Analysis of results
IX. Fundamentals of observational based modeling approaches
A. Blanchard and Roth approach

B. Chang and Suzio approach

C. Correlation analysis techniques
X. Description and application of an observational based modeling approach with laboratory

The 31 course participants came from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. This group was similar to that in the first short course in its variation of professional levels. It included graduate students, technicians, post-docs, and advanced scientists. Some of the participants have regulatory responsibilities in their countries and a real need for operational knowledge on the subject.

The second course was taught in English with time set aside for question and answer sessions to aid in communications and understanding. Participants without a good understanding of English worked with others. This stimulated exchange and actually enhanced participation. Nevertheless, it is clear that these courses need to have lecturers who have dual or multiple language capability since the details of a subject often are only truly understood when presentations and answers to questions are made in the participants' native tongue.

Each participant returned to his/her home country with over a thousand pages of lecture notes and related materials plus documentation/user's guides for computer codes and ten floppy disks containing copies of all codes used in the course. These materials reflect research and development efforts that have evolved over more than a ten year period. It is expected that these materials will be integrated into course offerings to be developed by the participants at their home institutions. The course was designed as a prerequisite to a follow-on course envisioned to be given on 3-D urban/regional scale photochemical air quality simulation modeling systems. Several course participants inquired about the possibility of presenting the present course and the proposed follow-on course in their respective countries. This course also was evaluated by the participants and, again, the details are a part of the full report on the course.

The NSF grant provided funds for this course that included participants' and lecturers' travel and per diem expenses. The WMO contributed funds to assist with local expenses. The Universidad de Chile provided computer laboratory and lecture space, computers, and logistical support.

Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

The third ACEED/GAW short course was held at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBa) in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 4-15 November 1996. This course was a refinement of the first course on "Instrumentation and Measurement Methodologies in Atmospheric Chemistry." The syllabus followed closely the Buenos Aires course of 1995, but provided a great deal more laboratory and experimental opportunities. About two thirds of the course consisted of laboratory and field work, a significant part of which was taught by local university staff and graduate students. The course outline is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Outline for the Salvador Short Course

I. Introduction and descriptive atmospheric chemistry
A. Statement of the "problem" - Local, regional and global influences on the atmosphere by human activities: Examples - urban air pollution, global CO2, CH4, and CFC increases, stratospheric O3 loss

B. Know your pollutants: sources, sinks and lifetimes for some of the most important species, e.g., CO, CH4, NNMCs, NOX, O3, SO2, PM-10, Metals)

C. Atmospheric fundamentals, thermal and pressure structure, the natural atmosphere, role of OH, units

D. Global biochemical cycles (e.g. C, O, N, S)

E. Rationale for measuring pollutants: Developing scientific hypotheses

F. Setting up atmospheric monitoring networks: For trends, human effects, ecosystem damage and as input to environmental decision making
II. Sampling atmospheric components
A. The heterogeneous atmospheric system (gas, particles and liquid)

B. In situ measurements vs. collection techniques (time vs. spatial resolution; preconcentration, filters, adsorption tubes, cryotraps, continuous measurements, etc.)

C. Calibration and awarding errors in operation of gas monitors

D. Errors in sampling and chemical analysis

E. Quality assurance / quality control
III. Measurements
A. Spectroscopic measurement techniques

B. Chromatographic measurement techniques

C. HPLC

D. Ion chromatography
IV. Important meteorological concepts in interpreting chemical measurements
A. The atmospheric boundary layer

B. Synoptic patterns

C. Local and regional flow

D. Back-trajectory calculations
V. Data assessment: Answering scientific questions with atmospheric chemical data

The participants were very enthusiastic about the course and did not mind the long hours. Course evaluation substantiates that attitude. The lecturers were atmospheric chemists (analytical or physical chemists) and meteorologists.

The 26 course participants came from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Indonesia, Kenya, and Puerto Rico. Once again, there was a wide variety of professional levels ranging from technicians to university professors. Three of the participants are working at GAW stations in Kenya, Indonesia, and Argentina. Three local participants are working on their Ph.D. theses connected with the Brazilian GAW Station at Arembepe. The third course was conducted totally in English.

The NSF grant and a new Inter-American Institute grant to the AGU provided support for the participants. The WMO contributed funds to assist with local expenses. IUPAC and the NSF grant paid for travel and per diem expenses of the teachers.

Future Courses Both participants and teachers want more of these courses to be taught. There is a great need to provide similar courses near the recently built GAW stations in Indonesia, Algeria, and Kenya. Continuation is, of course, subject to the availability of funds. The AGU and ACEED and its cooperating participants are exploring mechanisms to provide necessary funding. Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation, the Inter-American Institute, the World Meteorological Organization, and the many persons who are unnamed who have given their time and energy to the successful completion of these courses. Special thanks go to K. Demerjian, Chair of ACEED; V. Mohnen and J. Calvert, the driving forces who saw that this activity was put together and made to work; and J. Miller, who helped greatly with funding from the WMO and who aided in making the interface with GAW real; and the lecturers who truly made the courses happen.

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