Professor Paul Monks

Paul Monks, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Earth Observation Science, is driving a change in our understanding of our air quality and pollution. His expertise in air quality and climate, air pollution and measurement, science policy and Earth Observation science during the COVID-19 outbreak is revealing the effect of the social changes on air pollution.

External positions

• Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry
• Fellow of Royal Meteorological Society
• Pro Vice Chancellor and Head of College of Science and Engineering, University of Leicester
• Member of Audit Committee, (2012-) NERC
• Chair, Defra AQEG
• Member of Royal Society Global Environmental Research Committee (2012-)
• Member of Innovate UK Satellite Applications Catapult Advisory Group (2012-)
• Sole UK representative on Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution – International Body (2008-)
• UK Representative, ICACGP
• European representative, World Meteorological Organization, WMO GAW EPAC SSG
• Member of the (Defra) Science Advisory Council (SAC)

Research Group: Atmospheric Chemistry

Atmospheric Chemistry

The primary research interests are the scientific questions underlying:

• the role of photochemistry in the control of atmospheric composition
• chemistry and transpo rt, particularly the impact of long-range transport on chemical composition
• the feedbacks between climate and atmospheric chemistry
• organic complexity and the control of regional pollution and the measurement of the troposphere from space

Earth Observation science

The Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation (CEOI) brings together a partnership of UK scientists and engineers from academia and industry to develop the UK capability in Earth Observation (EO) technologies and instrumentation. It meets the key NERC and BIS objectives for the Centre and creates an environment for the submission of advanced future EO mission and instrument proposals to ESA.

The Centre is set up as a partnership led by Astrium together with QinetiQ, University of Leicester and STFC/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Breath analysis/medical diagnostics

DDU – the Diagnostic Development Unit.

This is a collaboration between Medicine, Space Science and Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Leicester. We focus on diagnosis in emergency care - an area of medicine where there is often not time to use conventional diagnostic methods and clinical decisions about treatment have to be made without the doctor having the full information about the patient's condition.

• M. E. Jenkin, K. P. Wyche, C. J. Evans, T. Carr, P. S. Monks, A. R. Alfarra, M. H. Barley, G. B. McFiggans, J. C. Young, and A. R. Rickard. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 12, 5275-5308, 2012. Development and chamber evaluation of the MCM v3.2 degradation scheme for b-caryophyllene
• Erika von Schneidemesser, Paul S. Monks, Air quality and climate – synergies and trade-offs, Environmental Science Processes & Impacts 23 May 2013 RSC Publishing
• Author(s): P.S. Monks; S. Beirle, Editor(s): J.P. Burrows; U. Platt; P. Borrell, Applications of Satellite Observations of Tropospheric Composition, Source: REMOTE SENSING OF TROPOSPHERIC COMPOSITION FROM SPACE, Book Series: Physics of Earth and Space Environments Pages: 365-449 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-14791-3_8 Published: 2011
• J. Remedios, H. Balzter, J. Burrows, S. Eves, M. Johnson, S. Lavender, P.S. Monks, A. O'Neill, A. Shepherd, Earth observation: A revolutionary leap into the future, Astronomy and Geophysics 53, 3.16-3.18., 2012
• Monks, Paul S. and Kuppusami Sharmilah Chemistry & Industry, Vol. 76, Issue: 3, 40-43, 2012. Simply Breath
• Iain R White, Kerry A Willis, Chris Whyte, Rebecca Cordell, Robert S Blake, Andrew J Wardlaw, Satish Rao, Jonathan Grigg, Andrew M Ellis and Paul S Monks, Real-time multi-marker measurement of organic compounds in human breath: towards fingerprinting breath J. Breath Res. 7 017112 (11pp) 2013.
• G-Step Case Studies
• The Growing Use of GMES across Europe’s Regions This can be downloaded from this web site. G-STEP has contributions on pages 30-31 and 48-49

• The Guardian
• Speaker
• BBC News
• The Conversation
• Blog: Explore the papers that shaped Tropospheric Chemistry