Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry Group

the budgets of methane and nitrous oxide in the pre-industrial period using air trapped in polar ice cores

Celia Sapart

Methane (CH₄) and Nitrous oxide (N₂O) are the two most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases after carbon dioxide (CO₂). Their atmospheric concentrations largely increased since the beginning of the preindustrial period and their future evolution is very uncertain.

In order to understand the atmospheric budget (sources-sinks processes) of those gases, we measured their concentrations and stable isotopes ratios in firn air and air trapped in ice core. Our system allows simultaneous high precision measurements of both gases (concentrations and isotopes) for atmospheric air and small ice core samples.

Our current goal is to reconstruct the budget of CH₄ and N₂O over the late Holocene.