Walker, Katrina

Project Title

Diurnal BOOGIE: An investigation into the day-night connectivity of organic matter transport and its fate between terrestrial, marine, and atmospheric biomes

Abstract

Oceans are a global reservoir of greenhouse gases, estimated to account for 20-40% of the post-industrial sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Quantifying the exchange of gases such as CO2, methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) between the ocean and atmosphere is a major challenge. Understanding how the ocean's organic skin layer modulates this exchange is critical to estimate the intrinsic oceanic sinks and sources of these key greenhouse gases both now and in the future.

Organic substances in the skin layer, known as surfactants, span across traditional operational definitions and are derived from multiple sources undergoing biotic and abiotic transformations along the land-ocean continuum. This project is focussed in the Cape Verde Islands and Atlantic Ocean; investigating the day-night connectivity of organic matter transport, its fate between terrestrial, marine, and atmospheric biomes, and understanding how this affects the air-sea gas exchange.

Supervisors

Dr Ryan Pereira
Dr Alex Poulton

Contact

kjw@hw.ac.uk