Oceans and Atmosphere
The Ocean covers approximately 70% of the Earth’s surface and is inextricably linked with the atmosphere; exchange between the two drives the Earth’s weather and climate.
Current Researchers
Dr Miguel Morales-Maqueda works in a range of research fields:
- Observations: Sea level, sea ice, hydrothermal and geothermal flows
- Modelling: Ocean circulation and ocean-climate interactions, sea ice, methane hydrates
- Marine robotics: Wave Gliders; Instrumentation: BPR and GNSS systems in marine science.
Professor Sam Wilson current works at the interface of chemical oceanography, biogeochemical cycles, analytical chemistry, and microbiology, and focusses on trace gas chemistry in relation to emissions, microbial metabolism, and elemental cycling.
Example Projects
Real-time measurements of nitrogen fixation: Biological dinitrogen (N2) fixation refers to the metabolic capability of certain microorganisms to convert N2 into ammonia and thereby make it available for cell growth. N2 fixation is an important source of new production in ocean gyres but there is currently a shortage of real-time measurements to determine its spatial and temporal distributions across ocean basins. I am currently working on a technique called ‘argon induced hydrogen production’ to conduct in situ measurements of N2 fixation with a high temporal resolution.
Deoxygenation and nitrous oxide: Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful, long-lived greenhouse gas which is naturally emitted from the oceans. Human-induced deoxygenation of the marine environment is predicted to cause a net increase in N2O emissions from the ocean but the relationship between N2O and O2 is insufficiently constrained at present. This research will constrain N2O yield across a wide range of O2 concentrations for a variety of environmental samples and thereby improve the parameterization of N2O in biogeochemical models.
