Dr. James Levine - Profile
Contact Dr. James Levine
+44 (0)1223 221400
Biography
I joined the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in 2007, moving just two miles from the Centre for Atmospheric Science (CAS), University of Cambridge, where I studied for a PhD. My first exposure to computer modelling, and specifically that of atmospheric chemistry and transport, was a six-month research project in CAS during the final year of my first degree (MSci Natural Sciences). It focussed on the impact that emissions from the East coast of the US have on Western European air quality, a theme I returned to through participation in the Inter-continental Transport of Ozone and Precursors field campaign.
Following my first degree, I worked for the best part of two years in the European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit, primarily on the joint EC-ESA initiative, Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security – Global Atmospheric Observations. I also spent a day or two a week keeping my hand in the modelling, exploring troposphere-to-stratosphere transport via the tropical tropopause layer. This modelling, motivated by the potential for very short-lived halogenated species emitted from the tropical ocean to contribute to the depletion of stratospheric ozone at low and mid-latitudes, became the subject of my PhD.
The link between my PhD work and my current research is the Cambridge parallelised-Tropospheric Offline Model of Chemistry and Transport. In contrast to using this model to explore transport in the tropics, it is now providing a tool with which to explore past changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere recorded in Antarctic ice. A central theme is the interaction between chemistry and climate, my initial focus being the dramatic rise in atmospheric methane, from around 360 ppbv to about 700 ppbv, between the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago) and the pre-industrial era (200 years ago).
Originally, this work comprised a contribution to the project, Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System - Dynamics of the Earth System and the Ice-core Record, jointly funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Institut National des Sciences de L'Univers. However, this work has continued under the umbrella of the Chemistry and Past Climate Science Program at BAS, one part of the Polar Science for Planet Earth Strategic Science Framework. It represents a collaboration between BAS, CAS and the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de L’Environnement.
