From a rooftop at the University of Houston there’s quite a view.

Scientists are never more interested in it than when they can’t see it so well.

KHOU-TV

The rooftop instruments will measure particles and chemicals in the air.

“Houston is the U.S. capital in ozone efficiency,” UH researcher Barry Lefer said.  We’re very good at making ozone here.”

Which, of course, is bad.

“It’s basically a vacuum cleaner with a filter,” Lefer said.

So up on the rooftop is a crop of instruments, the kind that measure particles and chemicals and all the stuff in the air.

“We’re also measuring all the precursors to ozone, all the different pieces of the puzzle so we can understand why the ozone is forming in Houston,” Lefer said.

A few buildings away, another scientist has come up with a computerized ozone forecast.

“Northern part of Houston, when you are living near airport area, I think you get a couple hours of high ozone,” UH’s Dr. Daewon Byun said.

Rather than a general forecast of a bad day in Houston, his is more specific about areas.

“It you are planning certain outside activities, then you can plan better,” Dr. Byun said.

For the next couple of months, these and other scientists are working together on Houston air.

It’s easy for people here to get excited just about the science and the research, but there is of course a bigger picture for the city.

So from the UCLA experiment that beams light from UH-Downtown and measures pollution in between, to measuring the output of a power plant barely visible in the distance, there is one goal.

“The entire soup is having an impact on the human beings and also on the environment, on the trees which can not escape from the environment,” UH researcher Bernhard Rappenglueck said.

The better they understand the soup, the more likely they are to come up a solution.