B.S. Civil Engineering, B.A. Economics, and M.S. Environmental
Engineering (1988) Stanford University
M.S. (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) Atmospheric Science, University of California at Los Angeles
The main goal of Jacobson’s research is to understand physical, chemical,
and dynamical processes in the atmosphere better in order to address atmospheric
problems, such as climate change and urban air pollution, with improved scientific
insight and more accurate predictive tools. He also evaluates the atmospheric
effects of different solutions to climate change and air pollution problems
and supports mapping and analysis of winds for wind energy and optimizing transmission
among multiple renewable energy sources. To accomplish many of these goals,
he has developed and applied numerical solvers to simulate gas, aerosol, cloud,
radiative, and land/ocean-surface processes. In 1993-4, he developed the first
gas-aerosol-radiative air-pollution model with interactive feedback to weather
on any scale. In 2001, he invented the nested global-through-urban air-pollution-weather-climate
model. In 2000, he discovered that black carbon, the main component of soot
particles, may be the second-leading cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.
In 2008, he demonstrated and quantified the effect of carbon dioxide on human
health through its feedback to air pollution. He has also examined the relative
effects of greenhouse gases versus aerosols on global climate, the effects
of aerosols on ultraviolet radiation, the effects of aerosol mixing state on
atmospheric heating, the effects of biomass burning on climate, the effect
of hydrogen fuel cells on air pollution and the ozone layer, the effects of
aerosols on winds and precipitation, the effects of ethanol and diesel vehicles
on air quality, and the effects of agriculture on air pollution. To date, he
has published two textbooks and over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles. Several
hundred researchers have used computer models that he has developed. In 2005,
he received the American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award for "significant
contributions to modeling aerosol chemistry and to understanding the role of
soot and other carbon particles on climate.” His recent paper, "Effects
of ethanol versus gasoline on cancer and mortality in the United States" was
the top-accessed article in the Journal Environmental Science and Technology
for April-September, 2007.
Atmosphere / Energy Program
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terman Engineering Center, Rm. M-31
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4020, USA
Tel: (650) 723-6836
Fax: (650) 725-9720
Email: jacobson@stanford.edu
Curriculum Vita
Current Graduate Students:
- Bethany Corcoran
- Mike Dvorak
- Diana Ginnebaugh
- Elaine Hart
- Idania Rodriguez
- Alice Ryan
- Eena Sta. Maria
- Eric Stoutenburg
- John Ten Hoeve
- Jordan Wilkerson
Graduate Student Alumni:
Current Postdoctoral Researchers :
Postdoctoral Researcher Alumni:
Testimony to U.S. House Committee on Black Carbon and Global Warming
Testimony to U.S. House Committee on Air Pollution Health Impacts of Carbon
Dioxide
Textbooks:
Fundamentals
of Atmospheric Modeling
Fundamentals
of Atmospheric Modeling, 2d ed.

Atmospheric
Pollution: History, Science, and Regulation
Some papers organized by topic (please see Curriculum
Vita for full list)
- Energy resources and effects on the atmosphere
- Exploiting Wind Versus Coal
- U.S.
and Global Windpower Distribution and Statistics
- Effects of converting U.S. vehicles to hydrogen fuel
cell or hybrid vehicles
- The effect on photchemical smog of converting the U.S.
fleet of gasoline vehicles to modern diesel vehicles
- Effects of converting to ethanol (E85) vehicles on air
pollution and climate
- High-resolution aerosol evolution near the point of emission
- Evolution of nanoparticle size
and mixing state near the point of emission
- Enhanced coagulation due to evaporation and its effect
on nanoparticle evolution
- Regional climate, UV, and ozone effects of aerosols.
- Development and application of a new
air pollution modeling system -- Part III. Aerosol-phase simulations
- Development and application of a new
air pollution modeling system -- Part II. Aerosol-module structure and
design
- Studying the effects of aerosols on
vertical photolysis over an urban airshed
- Isolating nitrated and aeromatic
aerosols and nitrated aromatic gases as sources of ultraviolet light absorption
- Effects of aerosols on California
and South Coast climate
- Wind reduction by aerosol particles
- Effects of soil moisture, irrigation, and agriculture on
regional climate and air pollution
- Effect of soil moisture on temperatures,
winds, and pollutant concentrations in Los Angeles
- The effects of agriculture on climate and air pollution
in California
- Regional and nested global-urban studies of photochemical
smog
- Development and application of
a new air pollution modeling system. Part I: Gas-phase simulations
- Development and application of a new
air pollution modeling system – Part III. Aerosol-phase simulations
- GATOR-GCMM: 2. A study of day-
and nighttime ozone layers aloft, ozone in national parks, and weather
during the SARMAP field campaign.
- The effect on photochemical smog
of converting the U.S. fleet of gasoline vehicles to modern diesel vehicles.
- On the causal link between carbon dioxide and pollution
mortality.
- Global direct radiative forcing of soot and other aerosols
and global liquid/solid aerosol composition
- A physically-based treatment of elemental
carbon optics: Implications for global direct forcing of aerosols
- Strong radiative heating due to the
mixing state of black carbon in atmospheric aerosols
- Global direct radiative forcing due
to multicomponent anthropogenic and natural aerosols
- Multiple size-distribution studies of the mixing state of
aerosols and clouds
- Modeling coagulation among particles
of different composition and size
- Strong radiative heating due to the
mixing state of black carbon in atmospheric aerosols
- Analysis
of aerosol interactions with numerical techniques for solving
coagulation, nucleation, condensation, dissolution, and reversible
chemistry among multiple size distribution
- Development
of mixed-phase clouds from multiple aerosol size distributions and
the effect of the clouds on aerosol removal
- Evolution of nanoparticle size
and mixing state near the point of emission
- Climate
response of soot, accounting for feedback to cloud absorption
- Effects of aerosol particles and greenhouse gases on global climate
- Control of fossil-fuel
particulate black carbon and organic matter, possibly the most effective
method of slowing global warming
- The short-term cooling
but long-term global warming due to biomass burning
- Climate response of soot, accounting for feedback to
snow and sea ice albedo and emissivity
- Climate response of soot,
accounting for feedback to cloud absorption
- Numerical techniques
- SMVGEAR: A sparse-matrix, vectorized
Gear code for atmospheric models
- Modeling coagulation among particles
of different composition and size
- Simulating condensational growth,
evaporation, and coagulation of aerosols using a combined moving and stationary
size grid
- Simulating equilibrium within
aerosols and nonequilibrium between gases and aerosols
- Development and application of a new
air pollution modeling system -- Part II. Aerosol-module structure and
design
- Computation of global photochemistry
with SMVGEAR II.
- Numerical techniques to solve
condensational and dissolutional growth equations when growth is coupled
to reversible reactions
- Improvement of SMVGEAR II on
vector and scalar machines through absolute error tolerance control
- Studying the effect of calcium and
magnesium on size-distributed nitrate and ammonium with EQUISOLV II
- GATOR-GCMM: A global-through
urban scale air pollution and weather forecast model. 1. Model design
and treatment of subgrid soil, vegetation, roads, rooftops, water, sea
ice, and snow
- Analysis of aerosol
interactions with numerical techniques for solving coagulation, nucleation,
condensation, dissolution, and reversible chemistry among multiple size
distributions
- Development of mixed-phase
clouds from multiple aerosol size distributions and the effect of the
clouds on aerosol removal
- A refined method of parameterizing
absorption coefficients among multiple gases simultaneously from line-by-line
data
- Studying ocean acidification
with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean
exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry
- A solution to the problem
of non equilibrium acid/base gas-particle transfer at long time step
Courses taught
Additional courses of interest for students studying Atmospheric
Sciences
Applications for graduate
admissions in CEE
The CEE wet-side undergraduate major description
The new CEE Environmental Engineering undergraduate major description
Research-project
descriptions
Other faculty and researchers working in the atmospheric sciences at Stanford: