ACRG News

• Women in Chemistry Outreach

  Women in ACRG have been developing resources in partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry and the University of Oxford as part of the ‘Women in Chemistry: Making the Difference’ project. The project aims to engage 11-14 year old girls to engage with chemistry across a wide-range of disciplines and research topics. Specifically, their content focusses on air quality concerns in the UK and aims to increase the confidence of young women in handling and analysing large datasets.

• New Paper on Brazil's Methane Emissions

  A new paper from ACRG has been published, using primarily satellite data to derive Brazil's methane emissions between 2010 and 2018.

• Cabot Institute blog on European Drought

  ACRG member Alecia Nickless has written a blog for the Cabot Institute about a recent study on CO2 fluxes in Europe and the 2018 drought.
• ACRG Member wins EGU’s Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientist

  Congratulations to Anita Ganesan, who has been awarded the EGU's 2021 "Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists". The EGU celebrates a small number of awards each year for important contributions to the Earth, planetary and space sciences.

• Cabot Institute blog on methane in Brazil

  The Cabot Institute have written a new blog on current ACRG work, from Anita Ganesan and Rachel Tunnicliffe, titled "Improving our understanding of methane emissions in Brazil".
• SEACRIFOG Summary Video

  ACRG's Alecia Nickless has been involved in the design of a tall tower measurement network across Africa for SEACRIFOG (Supporting EU-African Cooperation on Research Infrastructures for Food Security and Greenhouse Gas Observations), and contributed to a video to help summarise the project.
• Nature Research Highlight on SF6

  New research on the increasing atmospheric concentrations of the powerful greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluride (SF6) has been highlighted by Nature.
• New Research on Childhood Cancer Makes the News

  A new ACRG study, funded by Children with Cancer UK, aims to explore the potential link between air pollution and childhood cancers, and could help strengthen public health measures against air pollution.

• New NERC grant into the impact of COVID-19

  The new £100k NERC funding will help ACRG scientists explore the impact of lockdown restrictions on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Careful and timely monitoring of emissions will be essential to ensure that economic recovery does not come at the cost of failure to meet emission reduction targets set in the Paris Climate Agreement, or in the UK Climate Change Act.

• Nature News Feature on Atmospheric Monitoring

  Nature has published a News Feature describing the work of NOAA and AGAGE, monitoring the atmosphere for trace pollutants such as CFC-11, in which the ACRG is a key contributor.
• New Radon Instruments Installed

  Two new Radon detectors have been installed at Ridge Hill and Tacolneston, which will allow naturally emitted Radon gas to be used as a tracer for studying how well atmospheric transport models work around the measurement sites.

• New Article in The Conversation by Matt Rigby

  ACRG's Matt Rigby wrote an article for The Conversation, talking about how atmospheric measurements made by projects such as DARE-UK help monitor greenhouse gas emissions.

• ACRG in the Arqiva Newsletter

  The work of ACRG was featured in the Arqiva newsletter, whose tall tower infrastructure is used to host high precision greenhouse gas measuring instruments across the UK.

• ACRG team engaging with 300+ students and adults in a 2 day science extravaganza

  Members of the Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group, Aoife, Alecia, Jenna and Kanokrat, as well as our volunteer Charlotte, took their research out to educate and inspire young people and adults at last weekend’s country-wide Science Festival, FUTURES2019.

• ‘Discover your inner cow’ travels to Bristol's Festival of Nature

  Members of the Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group and MOYA team, Aoife Grant, Alice Ramsden , Angharad Stell, Julianne Fernandez, Neil Humpage, Stephane Bauguitte and Rachel Tunnicliffe, took their research out to educate and inspire young people and adults at Bristol’s Festival of Nature recently. The Festival of Nature https://www.bnhc.org.uk/festival-of-nature/, a free outdoor Science Festival attracted a record 15,000 people on the 8th and 9th of June this year.

• £3 million for major research study into UK greenhouse gas emissions

  A study to develop new methods for evaluating the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions using atmospheric observations has been awarded £3M by NERC, the Natural Environmental Research Council in the UK. The project Detection and Attribution of Regional greenhouse gas Emissions in the UK (DARE-UK) will work in conjunction with tall tower UK-DECC Network and is vital for assessing climate change mitigation measures.

• Renewed funding for greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substances monitoring

  A network of greenhouse gas and ozone depleting substance measurements in the UK and Ireland has been awarded renewed funding of £2.1 million for continued operation for a further two-and-a-half years.

Jul 2018

• New Blog Post on Eleni of ACRG's work with Bristol Futures

  Eleni has been working on the Bristol Futures Sustainable Futures Course. Read more about her endeavours in this new Cabot Institute Blog.

Oct 2017

• New paper published on methane emissions from India

  Our recent publication found there has been little growth in India's methane emissions in recent years. The study, which was lead by the ACRG's Anita Ganesan, is the first to have quantified India's emissions using a variety of measurement platforms including satellite, surface and aircraft data. For more details you can read the (open access) paper in Nature Communications.

• New PhD vacancies open for 2018

  New projects are now open to start in September 2018. For details of how to apply, eligibility and the projects themselves then head to the vacancies page. Successful students will be fully integrated into the NERC GW4+ DTP.

• ‌‌New PhD vacancies open for 2017

  New projects are now open to start in October 2017. For details of how to apply (deadline 6th January 2017), eligibility and the projects themselves then head to the vacancies page. Successful students will be fully integrated into the NERC GW4+ DTP.

• ACRG at NERC 'Into the Blue'

  We were represented at the Natural Environment Research Councils’s recent public outreach event, ‘Into The Blue’. Emily White from our group went along as part of the Living Earth project (https://livingearthbristol.wordpress.com, @LivingEarthTeam). Over the 5 days of the event they built up a model of planet Earth, whizzing through 4.5 billion years of Earth history. Starting with a willow structure, they added oceans, continents, an atmosphere, dinosaurs and eventually humans. Even our measurement site at Bilsdale was featured!

• ‌New blog on greenhouse gas emissions verification

  PhD student Dan Say, writes on the importance of emissions verification in a blog for the University of Bristol Policy Hub. 

• Simon celebrates 25 years of service

  Congratulations to Professor Simon O'Doherty who celebrated 25 years of service to the university on 12th October. Simon received an award from the Vice-Chancellor Hugh Brady to commemerate this achievement at a ceremony last week. Here's to another 25!

• Two new publications from the group

  Two papers from the group have been published recently. The first, written by lead author Mark Lunt, describes a new methodological development for inverse modelling. It is published in the open-access journal Geoscientific Model Development, : Estimation of trace gas fluxes with objectively determined basis functions using reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo.
  
  The second is written by PhD student Dan Say, and examines the accuracy of the UK's HFC-134a inventory. The paper is published in Environmental Science & Technology: Re-Evaluation of the UK's HFC-134a Emissions Inventory Based on Atmospheric Observations.

• New blog explains what Dan is up to in India

  PhD student and Group member Dan Say is currently in India measuring greenhouse gases from an aircraft. This new blog by Anita explains why this work is important and what we hope to learn from the campaign.

• PhD opportunities in greenhouse gas modelling

  We have a number of projects available to start in October 2016. Please see the vacancies page for more details.

• New publication resolves gap in potent greenhouse gas emissions

  A new study, led by members of the ACRG, has found that significant emissions of hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) are coming from countries who have no requirement to report their emissions. The study appears in the journal PNAS.

• We are now on Twitter

  Follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates from the group

• New instrument arrives for trace gas measurement

  The ACRG recently took delivery of a new instrument for the measurement of N2O and CO. The instrument is currently being tested in Bristol, before being installed as part of the UK DECC network. We look forward to being able to report the first measurements from this new instrument over the coming months. The ACRG also welcomed Kieran Stanley to the group in January. Kieran is a new post-doc in the group, and one of his responsibilities will be getting this instrument up and running.

• £918,000 renewed funding for UK greenhouse gas monitoring

  The ACRG has been awarded renewed funding to maintain the UK DECC Network.