Speaker – Drew Pendergrass, Postdoctoral Associate, Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. Hosted by Zhen Qu.

Seminar Title – Data-driven quantification of warming-induced emissions

Abstract – As the climate changes, emissions of certain atmospheric constituents may increase. In this talk, I will primarily discuss the impacts of a warming climate on global methane emissions.  Methane concentrations surged in 2020 and 2021 for reasons which are debated in the literature. We attribute the 2020-2021 methane surge to wetland activity from flooding in eastern Africa, especially in the river-fed wetlands of South Sudan. This flooding is associated with a positive anomaly in the Indian Ocean Dipole, which leads water to be transported west across the Indian Ocean, away from Australia and Indonesia and towards eastern Africa. This kind of positive anomaly is expected to increase with warming—an unexpected climate feedback. I will also show highly preliminary results using this same approach to estimate reactive nitrogen emissions. Because soil microbial activity responds to warmth and moisture, emissions of reactive nitrogen species, like nitrous oxide and ammonia, may also change with a changing climate.