Predicting tomorrow's smog levels is only as good as the accuracy of the numbers you're using and that's what scientists at the University of California have been working on.

When it comes to today's ultra-clean emissions vehicles, much of that work is being done by UCR's College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT).

The Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council, has recognized that and announced it will present its Pyke Johnson Award to CE-CERT at its annual conference in January.

The upcoming award will acknowledge the impact of a 2005 paper titled Measuring and Modeling Emissions from Extremely Low Emitting Vehicles,authored by CE-CERT Director Matthew Barth; researchers John Collins, George Scora, Nicole Davis; and Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Joe Norbeck.

The award, named after the 23rd chairman of the Highway Research Board, recognizes excellent research in transportation systems, planning and administration.

The CE-CERT researchers developed an emission measurement program for this new class of vehicles, which are 98 percent cleaner than catalyst-equipped vehicles of the 1980s. They also developed emissions models from those measurements. Then they applied those models to future emission inventories in regional air quality models.

According to the research findings, the models compared very favorably with actual measurements. These models can therefore predict future mobile source emission inventories that will have an increasing number of these extremely low emission vehicles in the overall fleet.

Researchers expect that the growth of extremely low emission vehicles in the fleets of tomorrow will help bring many regions into compliance with ozone standards.

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment of about 17,000 is projected to grow to 21,000 students by 2010. The campus is proposing a medical school and already has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center. With an annual statewide economic impact of nearly $1 billion, UCR is actively shaping the region's future.