Dr. Tadhg O’Loingsigh

Dr. Tadhg O’Loingsigh
Research Fellow

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  Windblown mineral dust has a range of impacts on the atmospheric, terrestrial and marine environments as well as human health. These impacts, the large geographical scale of dust storms and the remote location of their sources make this phenomenon challenging to study. However, with significant developments in satellite remote sensing technology over the past few decades, the understanding of dust storms and their impacts have greatly increased and the wide range of these impacts make the research extremely relevant and popular. Desert expeditions are undoubtedly one of the best features of working in this area

 

Research

Main Research: Spatial Science, Remote Sensing Surveying, Geomorphology, Meteorology.
Summary : My research over the past few years have included the study of bush fires and dust storms in Africa and more recently in Australia as well as some work on the use of satellite imagery to detect and map evidence of landslides and peatbog slips in Ireland. Currently I am a postdoctoral research fellow in an ARC-funded international team of scientist investigating the potential for geochemical and microbiological finger-printing of aeolian dust in the Australian environment.

• Dust Research:  Since 2003 I have been involved in the research of dust storms and their impact on the environment. I have specialised in the detection of plumes and mapping of sources using satellite imagery. In my current role as research fellow I:
  • Monitor climate and dust-storm prediction models (NAAPS, HYSPLIT) to coordinate the deployment of sampling equipment (filter pumps and laser particle counters) in a timely fashion to monitor the passage of dust over Melbourne and Canberra.
  • I also look for and process satellite imagery of dust storms to map their sources and verify the position of dust plume in relation to sampling equipment.
  • Participate in expeditions into the Australian Outback to run meteorological and sampling experiments.
  • Investigating the problems arising from using currently available weather codes from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to evaluate dust storm activity in the Lake Eyre Basin.
  • Currently working with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to create a 10-year climatology of air-parcel trajectories from known dust sources and to sensitive regions of Australia (cities, Great Barrier Reef) using the HYSPLIT trajectory model on a 12.5 km resolution mesoscale weather prediction model.

• Fire Research: Prior to coming to Australia, I did some work on forest fire monitoring from space using satellite imagery.
  • Investigating the quantitative relationship between the nadir and forward viewers of the ATSR-2 sensor onboard the ERS-2 satellite through quantitative analysis of active fires from space using the Near Infrared bandwidth (@1.6mm). Regions and fires of interest include the 2003 New South Wales fires, Australia, Central and Western Africa and Central Asia.
  • A comparative evaluation of channel and index-based techniques for pre-fire vegetation hydric stress and for post-fire burn-scar detection and mapping using high temporal resolution AVHRR-LAC data series, processed in ENVI. Channels and methods tested were Channel 1, 2 and 3a (NOAA-16 daytime channel 3), NDVI, MSAVI2, GEMI, VI3, Albedo and Surface Temperature.