UPS Welcomes Kassamba Mohamed Diaby

Kassamba Mohamed Diaby, a PhD student at the University of Felix Houphouët-Boigny (UFHB), returned to Toulouse in March 2022 to complete a second 6-month secondment at the Aerology Laboratory (LAERO, University Paul Sabatier) as part of the H2020 MSCA-RISE INSA project.

Based in the Science of Matter, Environment and Solar Energy Laboratory (LASMES, UFHB), Mohamed is completing his PhD thesis under the joint supervision of Pr Véronique Yoboué (UFHB, Côte d’Ivoire) and Dr Corinne Galy-Lacaux (CNRS, France).

Mohamed’s thesis is focused on calculating the deposition budget, including wet and dry processes, of different atmospheric chemical compounds of interest. In particular, these budgets include nitrogenous components across Côte d’Ivoire, both in urban and rural sites. To this end, he and his collaborators are working to complete the analysis of a database, for the period 2018-2020, that includes rain chemical composition, gas concentrations and particulate matter composition data. These data have been acquired from the monitoring project Air Pollution and Health in Urban Areas (PASMU) and from the International Network to study Deposition and Atmospheric chemistry in AFrica (INDAAF) programme.

During his visit, Mohamed will complete his work on the chemical characterization of precipitation collected at two urban sites (Abidjan and Korhogo) and one rural wet savanna site (Lamto) in Côte d’Ivoire. This work will be submitted as a publication in the journal Atmospheric Environment at the end of his stay. Mohamed will also analyse seasonal and annual variation in atmospheric gas concentrations for the three studied sites for the period 2018-2020. This will allow gaseous dry deposition fluxes to be estimated. There will be a focus on the quantification of the nitrogen deposition budget (including wet and dry deposition) along a north-south transect in Côte d‘Ivoire.