James Patrick Sherman

Bio

Dr. James Sherman serves as the leader of the Atmospheric Aerosols Research program at the Appalachian Atmospheric Interdisciplinary Research facility (AppalAIR). Appalachian State is home to the only co-located NOAA Federated Aerosol Network (NOAA FAN), NASA Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), and NASA Micro-pulsed Lidar Network (MPLNET) aerosol monitoring sites in the U.S. and relies completely on students for technical help with the measurements. The long-term (14 yr) aerosol datasets are being used by researchers worldwide, including the Aerosols Working Group of most recent IPCC Climate Assessment Report, to (a) study how changing regional air quality is impacting the solar radiation budget; (b) validate NASA satellite-based retrievals over mountainous U.S. terrain; and (c) study the roles of changing emissions and meteorology on clouds and aerosols. Sherman also currently serves as Co-PI on an NSF-IRES grant (Solomon Bililign, PI), for which he and Appalachian State students developed handheld sunphotometers and worked with student Citizen Scientists at Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BUIST) to initiate long-term aerosol measurements at BUIST in 2018