Unraveling a newly discovered, mysterious CH₄ flux in glaciers and ice sheets.

About My Research

It was back in 2016 I went to Greenland with a colleague. We had been given the opportunity to test out a demo version of the GasScouter which was set to be release shortly thereafter. Our original goal of the trip was to measure uptake of atmospheric CH₄ in dry tundra soils, which often are low and therefore require the precision that the GasScouter offers. However, this was not where things went. We were basically doing spatial surveys of the fluxes which took us closer and closer to the edge of the Greenland Ice sheet. Right up to it in fact so we touched the ice. There was numerous cracks and caves under the ice and as curious scientist we poked our heads in to these! Immediately, we felt a chilly wind coming towards us, which was something we never heard of. Fortunate enough to have a portable CH₄ analyzer with us, we naturally started measuring in this ice air and soon realized nothing was as it seemed. Right there, that afternoon, our understanding of the natural CH₄ cycle had been added a new piece to the puzzle. Glaciers, ice sheet emit methane to the atmosphere. Until that day this emission had never been measured directly. We published the data in Scientific Reports (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35054-7). The impact of this discovery is that our results from 2016 have inspired researchers across the world to go out and look for CH₄ in other glaciers and have helped to form the basis for research that is now unravelling this mysterious flux, what controls it and what the magnitude is in glaciers across the world in the Himalayas, Canada and Alaska.

How Picarro Analyzers Helped

Coming from a background where all gas concentrations were measured by a gas chromatograph (GC) it was first of all a revelation to start working with gas analyzers that would give you the results from the get go. This has been helpful in many ways in my research. I used a multi-species gas analyzer (G2508) to evaluate how laser based instruments performed compared to GC in soil flux studies providing firm evidence of pros and cons. It has also helped me to become better at performing more precise soil flux measurements as it possible seeing on the screen as mistakes happen when fluxes are measured. Errors can quickly be corrected and fluxes remeasured. But the analyzers have also been helpful to discover new CH₄ emission pathways we would otherwise have missed.

I am now using a multi-species gas analyzer (G2508) to understand how managing the hydrology of peatlands impact the total greenhouse gas budget after rewetting. We are utilizing the full potential of the G2508 analyzer as we have connected it to an automated greenhouse gas flux system that enable us to measure CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O fluxes in high frequency and for many spatial replicates. This provides us with exactly the kind of dataset we need to understand these systems better as we can capture the temporal and spatial dynamics of all three major GHG's than we previously could. Not only does this provide cool results for our scientific papers, it also provide an excellent dataset for modelling and an explorative platform to test new methods to derive emission factors from land use change based on hydrological and climatological dynamics. These emission factors are urgently needed for improved GHG inventories and planning for future greenhouse gas emission mitigation policies from agriculture.