Will Drysdale
Research Associate
Profile
Biography
Will is a Research Associate in the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Labs and the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science.
Research
Overview
Research Interests
Air quality policy regulates legally acceptable concentrations of pollutants, as health effects are mediated by exposure. However, the concentration of an air pollutant is a product of meteorology and emissions. It is not possible for local policies to affect the regionally transported pollutants, not the impact of weather conditions, leaving emissions as the element that can be directly controlled.
In my research I work to measure emissions of pollutants, primarily NO and NO2, in urban areas. The main method I use for this is eddy covariance - a micrometeorological technique that leverages high time resolution measurements of turbulence and pollutant concentrations to derive emissions – to measure these emissions in urban environments. These data allow for the identification of sources and can track the change in emissions over time or from policy intervention, and I have deployed experiments measuring this in London and Delhi. I have also deployed similar instrumentation and techniques to measure O3 deposition to the ocean.
Emissions of NOx around the BT Tower in London in 2017. Drysdale et al 2020.
As part of my role, I manage the NOx measurements at the BT Tower Atmospheric Observatory for the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, which has been making continuous measurements of NOx emissions since 2020. I maintain high time resolution chemiluminescence NOx and O3 instrumentation and develop our eddy covariance software (an extension to the eddy4R suite of packages).
Publications
Selected publications
- Eddy covariance measurements highlight sources of nitrogen oxide emissions missing from inventories for central London. Drysdale, W. S., Vaughan, A. R., Squires, F. A., Cliff, S. J., Metzger, S., Durden, D., Pingintha-Durden, N., Helfter, C., Nemitz, E., Grimmond, C. S. B., Barlow, J., Beevers, S., Stewart, G., Danjnak, D., Purvis, R. M. and Lee, J. D., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 9413-9433, 2022
- Evidence of Heating-Dominated Urban NOx Emissions. Cliff, S. J., Drysdale, W. S., Lewis, A. C., Møller, S. J., Helfter, C., Metzger, S., Liddard, R., Nemitz, E., Barlow, J. F. and Lee, J. D., Environ. Sci. & Tech., 59, 4399-4408, 2025
- UK surface NO2 levels dropped by 42 % during the COVID-19 lockdown: impact on surface O3. Lee, J. D., Drysdale, W. S., Finch, D. P., Wilde, S. E. and Palmer, P. I., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2020, 15743-15759
- COVID-19 lockdowns highlight a risk of increasing ozone pollution in European urban areas. Grange, S. K., Lee. J. D., Drysdale, W. S., Lewis, A. C., Hueglin, C., Emmenegger, L., Carslaw, D. C., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2021, 4169-4185,
- Measurements of traffic-dominated pollutant emissions in a Chinese megacity. Squires, F. S., Nemitz, E., Langford, B., Wild, O., Drysdale, W. S., Acton, W. J. F., Fu, P., Grimmond, C. S. B., Hamilton, J. F., Hewitt, C. N., Hollaway, M., Kotthaus, S., Lee, J., Metzger, S., Pingintha-Durden, N., Shaw, M., Vaughan, A. R., Wang, X., Wu, R., Zhang, Q., Zhang, Y., Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2020, 8737-8761
