Logan Mitchell

Geology PhD student, Logan Mitchell, is making high resolution measurements of methane in ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution and is responsible for about 20% of the total increase in radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Understanding how methan varied in the past before humans were affecting it is critical to understanding how methane will change in the future. In the Austral summer of 2008-09, Logan went to Antarctica to participate in the drilling of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) ice core. This ice core will have unprecedented temporal resolution and will produce the best record of greenhouse gases from Antarctica over the last 100,000 years. These records, in addition to existing and newly created records from Antarctica and Greenland, will help scientists understand past climate changes to a degree that has not yet been possible by revealing fine scale but important details about where, when, how and why these climate changes occurred.