Tropospheric Aerosol Program

Much of the science that had been planned for the Tropospheric Aerosol Program (TAP) will in the future be conducted under the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Science Program, which, beginning in Fiscal Year 2005, will focus on radiative forcing of climate change by atmospheric aerosols. Interested readers are referred to the ASP web site and to the documents accessible from that page. Because much of the science that had been planned for TAP coincides with planned research in the Atmospheric Science Program, this page is being maintained to provide background technical information. AP Program Plan (March, 2001) presents an overview of the research to be conducted in TAP. This plan is a natural outgrowth of reviews, assessments, and workshops undertaken over the past few years by the National Research Council; the Air Quality Research Subcommittee of the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, National Science and Technology Council; and NARSTO (originally the North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone, now with an expanded scope that includes aerosols), a public/private partnership, whose membership spans government, the utilities, industry, and university researchers in Mexico, the United States, and Canada...