PhD project offered by the IMPRS-gBGC in Jan 2025

Airborne observations and mesoscale modeling for improved methane budgets in tropical South America

Christoph Gerbig, Michał Gałkowski, Santiago Botía, Kai U. Totsche

Project description

Methane, the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, is emitted into the atmosphere from a variety of anthropogenic and natural sources such as oil and gas industry, waste, agriculture, and emissions from wetlands. The imbalance of the sources with the sinks, mostly oxidation by OH through photochemistry, has led to a renewed strong increase of atmospheric CH₄ over the past decade. The tropical regions contribute more than half to global CH₄ source, with dominant contributions from natural wetlands, followed by the agriculture and waste sector. South America, although covering only 14% of the global wetland area, contributes the largest portion of estimated wetland emissions of CH₄ (~53.5 ± 23.2 Tg CH₄ yr-1), and corresponds to the largest uncertainty in the global wetland CH₄ budget (Zhang et al., 2017). Climate change is expected to impact these natural fluxes, opening the potential for feedback mechanisms (Zhang et al., 2023).

Atmospheric observations in combination with inverse modeling of atmospheric transport can be used to obtain estimates of surface-atmosphere exchange fluxes. However, data are sparse, and the spatio-temporal dynamics of fluxes and interactions with atmospheric transport are complex. Therefore, the research mission CoMet3-Tropics has been scheduled for July and August 2026 to intensively sample the atmosphere with the HALO research airplane, instrumented with systems for in-situ measurement as well as remote sensing. In combination with atmospheric modeling using WRF-GHG or ICON-ART, the target is to get improved estimates of methane emissions, but also to obtain a better understanding of how to better represent long-term atmospheric observations such as from ATTO (the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory) in inverse transport modeling.

The candidate will support the planning and execution of the CoMet3 mission, including operating instrumentation to measure greenhouse gases in-situ and via air sample collection. Mesoscale tracer simulations will be used for mission preparation as well as for interpretation of the results.

Working group & colaborations

The candidate will be part of the Biogeochemical Signals department and will have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers from multiple institutions in Brazil and Germany.

Requirements for the PhD project are

Applications to the IMPRS-gBGC are open to well-motivated and highly-qualified students from all countries. Prerequisites for this PhD project are:

Master’s degree in bio(geo)chemistry, environmental science, geosciences, physics, atmospheric science, engineering, remote sensing or other disciplines related to environmental sciences.
Computational skills

Experience with programming languages like R or python
Experience dealing with spatially gridded datasets
Statistics

Excellent oral and written communication skills
Willingness to travel to South America if needed

The Max Planck Society (MPS) strives for gender equality and diversity. The MPS aims to increase the proportion of women in areas where they are underrepresented. Women are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply. We welcome applications from all fields. The Max Planck Society has set itself the goal of employing more severely disabled people. Applications from severely disabled persons are expressly encouraged.

References

Zhang, Z., N. E. Zimmermann, A. Stenke, X. Li, E. L. Hodson, G. Zhu, C. Huang, and B. Poulter, Emerging Role of Wetland Methane Emissions in Driving 21st Century Climate Change, Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences 114, 36: 9647-52, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618765114, 2017

Zhang, Z., Poulter, B., Feldman, A.F., Ying, Q, Ciais, P., Peng, S. and Li, X.: Recent intensification of wetland methane feedback, Nat. Clim. Chang, 13, 430–433, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01629-0, 2023