Guest Post by Matthew Davis, 2025-2026 Sustainability Leadership Fellow and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University
“So, what is your research about?”
It was a sunny day in July, and I had just sat down next to an Italian graduate student who was on the same bus as me to Denver International Airport. He had been attending a math conference at my university, and being in a tangentially related field, I was curious.
He winced, “I study linear algebra, but you wouldn’t get it.”
Over the next few hours, I learned more about what it’s like to be a math PhD candidate than I ever expected to know, but I never did find out what exactly his research was about, or why it mattered. If I was a funding agency, I would have passed on funding his research.
I keep thinking about this interaction, because it highlights a common challenge for scientists: explaining technical and complex work in an accessible way for a non-technical audience.
“And what do you do?”
In the past, I’ve struggled with this question, often overloading the questioner with too much information. Lately however, I’ve started telling people that I hit things with wrenches and measure cows. While this may seem flippant, it puts my work on an accessible level, and provides an opportunity to have a deeper conversation about what atmospheric scientists actually do, if the questioner is interested. So, what do I really do? Primarily, I am a field scientist measuring reactive nitrogen, particularly ammonia, in the environment.
To make that make sense, I think it will help to briefly explain the three major approaches in atmospheric chemistry: field studies, lab experiments, and environmental modelling. Simply put, field scientists make measurements of (hopefully) interesting phenomena in interesting places; experimentalists carry out measurements under controlled conditions to explain or parameterize the field observations; and modelers use a complex mathematical model to extrapolate the observations of field scientists and experimentalists to “the big picture” that can’t be easily captured by observations. As a field scientist, I have naturally explained this in a way that centers my own work, but each branch simultaneously depends upon and supports the other two branches.
To illustrate the synergistic nature of these branches in practice, let me share an example from a recent field study. In the CORNCOB (Characterizing Oil & gas and agRicultural emissions in the Northern COlorado Basin) study, my research group measured methane – ammonia and methane – ethane ratios at facilities in Northern Colorado. From a combination of previous field studies and laboratory experiments, we have a reasonable idea of how long ammonia persists in the atmosphere. We could then input this data into a chemical transport model—a simulation that couples weather and chemistry—to predict how much agricultural ammonia is polluting the nearby Rocky Mountain national park. Fieldwork like this requires the following elements:
- an interesting phenomenon to measure;
- a location that will make for environmentally relevant measurements;
- suitable equipment to make those observations;
- skilled researchers who can operate and maintain equipment, collect data, and interpret results.
In short, the cows (and other agricultural and energy extraction sites), northern Colorado, the wrenches, and me. Now that we understand what the work entails, the next question is why does it matter—and to whom?
“So why does your work matter?”
Perhaps you are a local resident, and you are concerned by the odor pollution of 100,000 cattle in the animal feeding operation nearby. Maybe you are asthmatic, and you are concerned by the contribution of ammonia emissions to fine particulate matter. I love water birds, and I worry about the contribution of nitrogen pollution to eutrophication in local bodies of water. Perhaps you care about environmental conservation and would be interested to know more about how agricultural emissions are threatening nearby vulnerable ecosystems. Maybe you are a funding agency that wants to track your progress towards statutory emission reduction goals. If you are reading this from far away from Colorado, and these concerns seem rather provincial, perhaps I could interest you by noting that the production of ammonia is one of the largest line items in global fossil fuel consumption, and that N2O (a transformation byproduct of fertilizer application) is a greenhouse gas 250x more powerful than CO2.
Tell me what you care about, and I’ll show you how my work might matter to you.
