Fabien Paulot, NOAA GFDL
12 June 2024
New constraints on the H2 atmospheric budget
Hydrogen (H2) has seen renewed interest as a promising avenue to reduce our carbon footprint. This interest has also brought to the forefront significant gaps in our understanding of the complex set of sources and sinks that control the atmospheric budget of H2, uncertainties that limit our ability to quantify the environmental impact of increased H2 usage. In this seminar, I will present an overview of ongoing research efforts to advance our understanding of the H2 atmospheric budget involving soil microbiologists and hydrologists, atmospheric chemists, and Earth System modelers at different US universities and NOAA labs. In particular, I will focus on the following questions:
- a) How has atmospheric H2 changed since 1900 and what are the drivers of this change especially in recent years?
- b) What are the environmental controls on H2 removal by microorganisms, the largest sink of atmospheric H2, and how can this be represented in global models?
Dr Fabien Paulot is an atmospheric chemist in the Earth System Processes and Interactions Division at NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). He is broadly interested in the interactions between biosphere and atmosphere mediated by atmospheric chemistry and their implications for air quality and climate. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2011 where his dissertation focused on isoprene photochemistry. Before joining GFDL, he was a Harvard University Center for the Environment postdoctoral fellow where he focused on ammonia emissions and their impact on fine particulate matter.