Welcome to the team Delta, Ouji and Lara! May the summer be both fun and productive! Lots of code will written for sure.
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Congratulations to Hannah for winning the best student talk prize at the NZ Meteorological Society’s Annual Conference in 2024! The judges commended Hannah for her communications and great graphics on very important work. Well done Hannah!
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PhD position
The rapid expansion of the space industry has resulted in an unprecedented pace of rocket launches and satellites to orbit. Over the past 15 years, rocket launches have nearly tripled, and the number of satellites orbiting Earth has surged tenfold. This has raised significant concerns about the environmental impacts of space activities. Current industry practice is to deorbit satellites at the end of their life by re-entering them into Earth’s atmosphere. This process is contributing to a growing environmental issue, which highlights a gap in our understanding of the impacts of re-entry on atmospheric chemistry and behaviour.
The re-entry of space debris, which releases hundreds of tons of metallic particles into the atmosphere annually, could have far-reaching consequences, including potential disruptions to the recovery of the ozone hole by introduction of new long-lived ozone depleting substance into the atmosphere. With projections estimating that up to 100,000 satellites could orbit the planet by the end of the decade, the threat of atmospheric contamination is becoming more pressing. High-altitude air pollution from rocket exhaust and satellite re-entries could persist for decades or centuries, with unanticipated consequences for our atmosphere and climate.
This PhD project, based at University of Otago, will provide key insights and recommendations for the management and mitigation of satellite atmospheric re-entry, by building on current understanding of the role of ozone in the atmosphere and climate system, as represented in the Community Earth System Model (CESM2).
For more information contact Associate Professor Annika Seppälä, or Dr Priyanka Dhopade (Department of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering, University of Auckland), who will co-supervise the project.
Our latest research article was published in Nature Comms. this morning New Zealand time: Kessenich, H.E., Seppälä, A. & Rodger, C.J. Potential drivers of the recent large Antarctic ozone holes. Nat Commun 14, 7259 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42637-0.
The story took on a life of its own in the media, some of which reported very alarming headlines. We do not in fact report that the ozone hole in general is getting worse, it definitely continues on a track of slow recovery! Our results show that the very core of the ozone hole does not, as yet, show those sign of recovery. We also highlight the need for continued, comprehensive, monitoring of polar ozone and related species through the winter and spring seasons in the future.
Here is a blog post we wrote for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Community hosted by Nature: https://earthenvironmentcommunity.nature.com/posts/unravelling-recent-patterns-in-antarctic-ozone
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Summer Research students start!
Yuna, Maia, and George have started summer research projects in the group! The three projects have different end goals but are all using satellite observations of ozone and related minor species in the polar atmosphere.
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Keeta’s research published in GRL
Keeta’s work from her MSc was published in Geophysical Research Letters:
, , , , & (2023). Observed loss of polar mesospheric ozone following substorm-driven electron precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2023GL104860. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104860
The online seminar was recorded and is available on YouTube!