RESEARCH
PUBLICATIONS |
The Group (left to right): Andrew Rice ,Will Porter, Patrick Reynolds, J'reyesha Brannon, Erica Hanson, Mariela Brooks, Greg Bostrom, Doaa Teama, Elliot Mylott
The impacts of climate change “…will affect almost every aspect of human society, including economic prosperity, human and environmental health, and national security” (U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2009). In order to mitigate climate change in the long-term we need a detailed understanding of the controlling mechanisms driving concentrations of greenhouse gases and other related trace gases in the atmosphere. Today there is little doubt that, through their radiative properties, greenhouse gases are responsible for much of the global temperature rise scientists have observed over the past several decades. There is high confidence that as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise in the future, so will global temperatures. Of growing importance is the second order questions of how much will temperatures rise and how fast? Here, scientists ability to predict future levels of greenhouse gases – which drives future climate – will ultimately depend on a comprehensive understanding of their sources and sinks and what controls their variability. We will also need increasingly complex Earth system climate models to couple these processes together and quantify the climate sensitivity, which is the climate’s response to radiative forcing.
Our research here at PSU focuses on understanding the drivers climate change. I am interested in contributing to a better understanding of atmospheric trace gas sources and sinks. This work has led our group to address long-standing and up and coming research questions at a variety of scales from the process-based level to the global atmospheric perspective. Current projects include:
Using stable isotopes to better understand past variations in the atmospheric methane
Developing new methods to measure atmospheric methane and its isotopic composition
Studying the global budget of atmospheric molecular hydrogen
Measurements of the isotopic composition of volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere