Megan Wright

Megan Wright

Biography

Megan Wright is a senior at Rice University majoring in Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. She is interested in the applications of chemistry and computational techniques to study the Earth’s climate, especially in the context of aerosols, wildfires, and extreme weather events.This summer, Megan is working under Dr. Arlene Fiore in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric& Planetary Sciences to analyze outputs of a chemistry-climate model and to determine the impact of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions on chemical species in the troposphere. At Rice, she interrogates the composition and transport of marine organic chemistry using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. Megan previously conducted summer research at the University ofGeorgia, where she studied rainwater chemistry and ambient aerosols, and at Rutgers University inNewark, where she was part of an REU program studying urban forest ecology. In addition to her research, Megan serves as the president of Rice’s Undergraduate Geosciences Society. After her undergraduate studies, Megan plans to pursue a PhD in environmental or climate sciences.

Abstract

Effects of Biomass Burning and Anthropogenic Emissions on Tropospheric Oxidation and CH4 Lifetime

Trends and variability in tropospheric oxidation processes are important to understand, as they have effects on pollutants such as methane and ozone. Fully resolving the interactions between atmospheric chemistry and climate typically requires computationally expensive modeling. Here, I utilized AquaChem, an idealized chemistry-climate model which simplifies climate dynamics, to understand how perturbations in anthropogenic and biomass burning (wildfire) emissions affect atmospheric chemistry. We ran AquaChem simulations for emission perturbation scenarios in which biomass burning and anthropogenic CO and NOx emissions were increased and decreased by ten and fifty percent. We then conducted a series of sensitivity tests on these results to determine how emission changes affected species including O3, CO, CH4, and OH. Results from these analyses indicate that OH concentrations and CH4 loss rates are more sensitive to anthropogenic emission perturbations than biomass burning changes. We found changes in tropospheric O3 burden to be more sensitive to biomass burning emissions, while CH4 lifetime was more sensitive to anthropogenic emission changes. Overall, biomass burning emissions mainly impacted low-latitudes of South America and Africa, while effects of anthropogenic emissions were spread across the northern hemisphere. These findings have implications for agriculture, climate prediction, methane drawdown initiatives, and human health.