Cothrel Studies Ozone on Two-Year NOAA Scholarship

Senior HTC Physics major Helen Cothrel conducting research in Boulder, Colorado

Last summer, Helen Cothrel ’15HTC Physics worked at the David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, CO, to study the Earth’s ozone layer. She received funding through an Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship, a two-year appointment with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Education.

The title of her NOAA project was “Summertime Ozone Measurements in the Colorado Front Range.” She looked at summertime ozone exceedances in Colorado (i.e. ozone episodes above the 75 ppb standard), and possible correlations between high ozone levels and specific ozone precursors.

Identifying ozone exceedances that correlate with a certain precursor would allow us to identify what circumstances led to an exceedance, such as forest fires or gas and oil well activity.

Read Cothrel describe her undergraduate research as “A Toe into the Sea of Knowledge That Churns Before Me.”