How Earth’s climate and greenhouses gases changed in the past, using polar ice cores.
Research Area
Ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland are fantastic archives of past climate and environmental conditions that can help us to understand our uncertain future. The bubbles trapped within the ice are pristine samples of ancient air meaning we can directly measure past variations in greenhouse gases. I specialise in a continuous measurement technique that produces the most detailed records of greenhouse gas levels possible. My work explores how fast greenhouse gases levels can change, what drives this, and what feedbacks are likely as climate warms.
The water itself holds useful information too. I am particularly interested in the inorganic chemical impurities, such as sea salt and mineral dust, present at low levels within ice cores. By using specialist geochemical techniques, such as isotope geochemistry and/or laser ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometry, we can learn about environmental changes, for example, sea ice expansion/retreat, storminess, bedrock exposure due to ice sheet retreat.
I work closely with colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge and as part of a large, friendly, international community. Over the next few years, I’m involved in projects at both poles and will be exploring the climate of the Late Holocene and >1 million years ago.
Project Interests
There is potential to develop exceptional records of Holocene greenhouse gases from a new high-snowfall Antarctica ice core through the UK project REWIND. Stable isotopes of carbon in methane and/or carbon dioxide could also be explored.
I’d be happy to discuss applying cutting-edge geochemistry techniques to ice cores. For instance, sulfur isotopes are unique tracers of marine productivity and volcanic eruptions. Ice samples extending through the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, an enigmatic change in global ice sheets, are available through Beyond EPICA.
I’m also keen to explore projects using numerical models to interpret ice core signals, in collaboration with other Cambridge researchers.
