Dr Alan Vance
Alan uses observations from the FAAM BAe146 research aircraft to study aerosols and their interaction with radiation, clouds and chemistry.
Areas of expertise
- Instrument development and characterisation.
- Observational data analysis.
- Optics and spectrometry.
- Humidity measurement.
- Remote sensing and radiative transfer.
Current activities
Alan transferred to the Aerosol Group in 2014 where he continues to build on previous expertise with the characterisation of the commercially produced WVSS-II for the international community, in collaboration with DWD and the manufacturer (SpectraSensors Inc.), and the group's own Short Wave Spectrometer. He also works with scientists at the University of Manchester on the remote sensing of trace gases as part of the GAUGE project for pollution monitoring and climate studies, using the Met Office's ARIES infrared spectrometer.
Career background
Alan graduated from the University of St Andrews in 1993 with a BSc in physics, went on to obtain a MSc in medical physics at Aberdeen, specialising in ionising and non-ionising radiation, and received his doctorate from Aberystwyth University in 2000. Alan's work there - partly funded by the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington - involved the characterisation of high resolution Fourier spectrometers used for routine monitoring of the stratospheric ozone layer from ground sites around the world.
Alan joined the Met Office in 1999, working on humidity and radiation measurement from the Met Office's C-130 aircraft as part of the Meteorological Research Flight's Airborne Remote Sensing Group (now OBR's Hyperspectral Sounding). In 2010, using data from the FAAM aircraft, in collaboration with volcanologists at the University of Sheffield and East Anglia University of East Anglia he published the first observations of homogeneous, halogen driven, ozone depletion in a tropospheric volcanic plume.