Jared Stickney shares field experience during the Front Range Ozone Éxperiment, aka FROZÉ

Do you know what is in the air you breathe?

This past summer, Professors Emily Fischer and Jeffrey Collett’s research groups at CSU collaborated with the University of Montana, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), and the Regional Air Quality Council in a field campaign designed to answer that exact question.

Ozone in excess concentrations where people breathe is harmful for human health, and this study’s mission was to investigate ways to mitigate these effects.

The Front Range Ozone Éxperiment, also known as FROZÉ, utilized both stationary and mobile measurements across the Colorado Front Range to gain insight into the distribution of ozone precursors along the Front Range. These measurements were performed because the Colorado Denver Metro and North Front Range area has been designated as nonattainment for ozone by the Environmental Protection Agency, as this region frequently exceeds the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone in the summer. 

A first-hand experience from one of the students involved in FROZÉ

My name is Jared Stickney, and I am a Master’s student in Professor Collett’s research group. My role in FROZÉ was to drive the CSU Plume Tracker, a Chevy Tahoe outfitted with instruments to measure air quality parameters.

The goal of driving the Plume Tracker was threefold: to gain information about the where and when ozone and its precursors occur, to collect whole air canisters for detailed volatile organic compound (VOC) speciation, and to visit disproportionately impacted communities to assess criteria pollutant and air toxics exposure in communities with little or no prior monitoring.

A typical week in the field campaign for me involved both leading and attending forecast briefings with the FROZÉ team, designing routes for drives in the Plume Tracker, selecting which communities to visit using CDPHE’s Enviroscreen 2.0 tool, and, of course, performing the actual drives in the Plume Tracker with my fellow student, Andrey Marsavin. Most of the drives started early in the morning, around 6-7 a.m., in order to capture the evolution of ozone throughout the day. In order to catch plumes in the whole air canisters, however, we also did a few night drives, as plumes are more concentrated at night due to the lower boundary layer.

Throughout these drives, I got to see many different parts of Colorado, and found myself enraptured with the gentle hills and tumbleweeds of the High Plains. It was exhilarating every morning I got to drive out in the field and see how the ozone would respond to different meteorological conditions. One of my favorite memories from this summer was when Andrey and I came across our first large methane and ethane plume from an oil & gas facility off of County Road 31 in Weld County at 3 a.m.. I remember excitedly shouting “we have to grab a can!” at the top of my lungs and running as fast as I could to grab a whole air canister in the back of the car so we could start sampling before the plume passed.

Being a part of FROZÉ this summer was such a wonderful experience that taught me the value of seeing science happen right in front of my eyes, and of being a part of something bigger than myself. This summer also helped fuel my passion for helping other people, and it was a privilege to know that the work that I did had a real impact in protecting people’s health. I want to thank the PIs of FROZÉ, Dr. Jeffrey Collett, Dr. Emily Fischer, and Dr. Lu Hu for allowing me to be a part of this field campaign, Andrey Marsavin for all of the help with planning and executing all thirteen of the drives, and the rest of the FROZÉ team for a great summer!

Main image: Andrey Marsavin (left) and Jared Stickney pose for a photo with the CSU Plume Tracker at the CSU Atmospheric Science campus.