Recent Graduate Shay Magahey Publishes New Research

Recently graduated Atmospheric Sciences major Shay Magahey’s paper, Isolating the effect of biomass burning aerosol emissions on 20th century hydroclimate in South America and Southeast Asia, has been accepted for publication in Environmental Research Letters. Environmental Research Letters is a peer-reviewed, open-access, scientific journal covering research on all aspects of environmental science and is published by the Institute of Physics. 

Magahey conducted this research alongside UGA Atmospheric Sciences professor, Dr. Gabriel Kooperman, as part of his Earth System Modeling Research Group. Magahey and Kooperman’s research aims to “evaluate the mechanisms by which biomass burning aerosol contributed to decreased tropical precipitation, with a focus on South America and Southeast Asia.” Their results “demonstrate that higher concentrations of biomass burning aerosol increases the quantity of cloud condensation nuclei and cloud droplets, limiting cloud droplet size and precipitation formation,” among additional findings. 

Magahey graduated from UGA in December 2022 and is now a PhD student in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). At UCSB, Magahey plans to conduct research utilizing climate models to understand the processes that drive changes in future El Nino events under climate change.