Alex Turner: Untangling the sources and fate of atmospheric methane over the last million years
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Methane is a key component of the global carbon cycle and the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after CO2. Atmospheric concentrations have exhibited large variations over glacial cycles as well as enigmatic trends in the present. The variations, which remain scientifically elusive, are driven by the relative balance between the sources and sinks. Major sources of methane include: wetlands, fossil sources, agriculture, landfills, and fires. Oxidation by the hydroxyl radical (OH) is both the main sink for methane and the primary atmospheric oxidant. Here we use observations of methane and it's isotopologues (δD, δ13C, and Δ14C) to jointly constrain the processes driving the variations in atmospheric methane over the last million years including the relative role of fossil sources, the changing oxidative capacity of the atmosphere, megafauna, and strat-trop exchange.
Bio
Alex is an atmospheric scientist whose research combines satellite remote sensing, numerical modeling, and Bayesian inference to study interactions between the carbon cycle and atmospheric chemistry. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. Prior to Washington, he was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley where he worked with Ron Cohen and Inez Fung. He completed his PhD in 2017 at Harvard with Daniel Jacob and his BS in 2012 at the University of Colorado with Daven Henze.
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