I am principally interested in urban air pollution and how it is affected by transport sources. Recent interests include the controlling influences of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations in urban areas, and in particular the contribution made by directly emitted NO2 from road vehicles. This work was the first to identify and quantify the growing importance of direct NO2 emissions and the factors influencing it (Carslaw, 2005; Carslaw and Beevers, 2005). It is now clear that these issues have (and will have) a large influence on European air quality policy.

I also have an interest in the development of techniques to better understand sources of air pollution and ways in which source attribution can be improved. I have developed a series of techniques to detect changes in atmospheric composition due to various interventions and to better understand emission sources. Examples include aviation emissions - source detection, quantification and characterisation, through high-frequency response measurements (Carslaw et al, 2006; Carslaw et al, 2008; Carslaw and Taylor, 2009).

For road vehicles I have developed detailed statistical models of carbon dioxide emissions from individual vehicles which have been used to understand the effect of intelligent speed adaptation systems on emissions (Carslaw et al, 2010).

I am keen on making many of these techniques available more widely to the air quality community. The openair project does just that (see www.openair-project.org) by providing data analysis tools available in an open-source environment using R statistical software.

I have been a member of the Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG) since 2002 and frequently present my work nationally and internationally.

air pollution, transport, sources, nitrogen dioxide, openair, techniques, statistics