Biography

Dr. Brian G. Heikes grew up on a Michigan farm and he credits that experience as convincing him he wanted to spend his career studying the atmosphere and its relation to the ocean.

“I have an agricultural background,” he says, referring to his father’s “hobby” farm. As such he grew up fascinated by the weather and the atmospheric changes that are essential factors affecting farming. “We had to constantly monitor the sky.”

Heikes received all three of his degrees from the University of Michigan in atmospheric sciences. “I guess I was naïve enough not to know that one should get degrees from a variety of universities.”

After leaving Michigan, he went to Colorado at a center for atmospheric research to continue use of a dataset that he was able to use during his pursuit of his doctorate. In his four years there he got married and with his wife, being from New England, started looking for a position east of the Mississippi. It just so happened GSO was starting a Center for Atmospheric Research and he became one of two hires in that specialty.

Along the way, Heikes has been involved in a host of atmospheric research projects and his expertise in chemistry (his father was also a chemist) was valued in addressing such problems as acid rain, an issue that received a lot of notoriety in the ‘70s and ‘80s—an issue that has dropped out of sight somewhat with the passage of legislation that resulted in the reduction of sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants. Acid rain may not make headlines now, he says, but the issue has morphed into other areas of atmospheric research.

Today Heikes is working on a number of technological advances that enables him and his colleagues to measure transport of chemicals by thunderstorms or deep convection over land and ocean surfaces. Part of that work took him and some graduate students to the ‘inland sea” area in Kansas where there was a huge sea millions of years ago that left salt deposits. The work there measured surface emissions into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. “We are trying to learn that part of the plumbing,” he says.

Some of Heikes research involves mounting mass spectrometers inside aircraft and flying over certain regions collecting data.

Heikes’ career so far has been witness to a lot of atmospheric changes. New regulations have done a good job in protecting ozone layers and in general, with the exception of a couple of locations, the air quality east of the Rocky Mountains has improved measurably in recent years. The same cannot be said for the West Coast, says Heikes, which is subjected to the polluted winds flowing out of China, India and Southeast Asia.

“Nixon did one thing right—he created the EPA and that resulted in clean air and water acts,” says Heikes, who also credits NASA and FAA for their roles in reducing pollutants into atmosphere.

Heikes who is involved in a considerable amount of outreach activities and collaborates with several faculty members in teaching a variety of courses, finds today’s graduate students are bringing their physics backgrounds in the quest to understand the dynamics of the ocean/atmosphere transport systems. “The students are very interested in trying to understand what the atmospheric inputs are in terms of nutrients and toxins.”

One of the new developments in atmospheric research is determining the emissions generated by the new development of oil and gas fields through fracking.

“I feel I will always have a job—we always need clean water and clean air,” he says.