{"id":7,"date":"2012-03-29T13:38:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T13:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mesas\/?page_id=7"},"modified":"2026-08-06T14:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:03:39","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BrianMagi-UNCCharlotte\"
\nEmail: brian dot magi at charlotte dot edu<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte<\/a>) in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences<\/a>. My research<\/a> explores air quality using low-cost air monitors, and data-oriented questions about climate. I work with students, academic and government researchers, regulators, non-profits, and communities on these questions.on these questions, but I also simply enjoy spending time tackling enormous datasets related to air quality and climate to better understand the Earth system. <\/p>\n

I teach courses at UNC Charlotte<\/a> on topics related to air quality, cloud physics, atmospheric electricity, data analysis methods, programming for Earth Sciences, and global environmental change, all of which are original courses that I have created since 2011. I don’t teach all those courses every year, and have even handed some of them off to others in my department with similar expertise. (My babies grew up!) <\/p>\n

As a part of my administrative work at UNC Charlotte in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences<\/a>, I oversee the management of the Earth Science Masters in Science (MS) degree program<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I describe some of my background below, but you can click the links above to learn more and\/or email me. <\/p>\n

Postdoctoral Research<\/h3>\n

I was a postdoc at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL<\/a>) in January 2007.  My office was at NOAA GFDL, but I was a postdoc through the Cooperative Institute with Princeton University. My supervisor at NOAA GFDL was Dr. V. Ramaswamy, an Atmospheric Scientist with expertise centered on atmospheric radiative transfer and climate modeling, and I worked closely with Dr. Paul Ginoux, an Atmospheric Scientist with expertise centered on aerosols and climate modeling, for over two years. In 2010, I started another postdoc with Professor Stephen Pacala in the Princeton University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. During my second postdoc, I began developing the framework for a pretty advanced global fire model. In 2011, I landed a faculty job at UNC Charlotte. While it’s been over a decade, I still feel very fortunate to have arrived in Charlotte and in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences (which is the former name of my department) when I did. Wait, are you still reading these ramblings?? Lessee, the best TV show is Avatar: The Last Airbender (the original one!) or BSG or… so many. How about the best cookie? It’s peanut butter chocolate chip. What’s the best movie? The Matrix? Blade Runner 2049? Interstellar? Loving the new Dune movies too. Speaking of, how about the best book… yes, Dune. All things Malazan? The Foundation trilogy? The Historian? The Third Policeman? Too many memorable TV shows and movies. Too many memorable books… uhh… too.<\/p>\n

Undergraduate and Graduate Research<\/h3>\n

Back to the right topic. I earned my Bachelors of Science degree in Physics and Applied Math from the University of Arizona<\/a> (UofA) in Tucson, Arizona, in 1998 (!). While at UofA, I worked as an undergraduate assistant for Professor Kurt Thome at the UofA Remote Sensing Group, where for the first time, I experienced the excitement of data collection and analysis outside of undergraduate physics labs. In 1999, I started my graduate studies in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. I joined the Cloud and Aerosol Research Group where Professor Peter Hobbs was my advisor until 2005 when he passed away from a battle with cancer. After 2005, my PhD advisor was Professor Qiang Fu. While working with Peter, I went on two field campaigns called SAFARI-2K (southern Africa) and CLAMS (Virginia coastal area) to collect data. SAFARI-2K data served as the basis for my PhD Dissertation. I flew with a team of scientists and engineers in the University of Washington research aircraft collecting data throughout the troposphere and directly in the smoke plumes from the prolific savanna woodland and grass fires that happen every dry season in southern Africa. I also saw giraffes and zebra out my window while we were flying low, and 1000 foot tall sand dunes in the remote Namibian desert – it looked like Arrakis. I climbed a 700 foot tall dune, but found no giant sandworms. I did see a herd of ostriches running in the desert though and that was otherworldly.
\n

\"Rainbow

Rainbow as seen from an airplane leaving a city, capturing nicely how our amazing atmosphere is constantly a part of our lives. Photo by Dr. Magi’s sister.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Email: brian dot magi at charlotte dot edu I am an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Geographical Sciences. My research explores air quality using low-cost air monitors, and data-oriented questions about climate. I work with students, academic and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":490,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2kjqv-7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2764,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions\/2764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/brian-magi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}