Dr Midhun George

Research interests

My research interest is mainly focused on improving the current understanding of chemical processes that control the budget of reactive radical species such as OH, HO₂ and RO₂ through field measurement. In particular, in the lower and mid-troposphere. 

During the day, the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere (OCA) is mainly controlled by reactions involving OH, HO₂ and RO₂. So the knowledge about the amount of these is necessary to estimate the OCA and production of secondary pollutants like O₃, peroxides, etc., in the troposphere. As part of my previous project, I participated in three airborne measurement campaigns which aimed to quantify differently trace gasses and aerosol particles in the outflows from different regions in Europe and Asia. Within these campaigns, we successfully measured the total sum of HO₂ and RO₂ and made a budget analysis based on other onboard measurements to understand the main sources and sinks of radicals in the measured airmasses.

My future work will involve the development of an absorption spectroscopy-based instrument to measure the total OH reactivity (k_OH) and compare the performance with the other measurement techniques. After comparison and characterisation, the instrument will make continuous field measurements of k_OH. The results will be compared with detailed chemistry models based on the Master Chemical Mechanism (MCM) to improve the understanding of the chemistry responsible for processing the trace gases in the troposphere.

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://eps.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

• PhD in Natural Science from University of Bremen, Germany
• MSc Tech (Photonics) from National Institute of Calicut, Kerala, India
• BSc Physics from University of Calicut, Kerala, India