Penelope Pickers

I am currently a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV), working on understanding carbon cycle processes and fluxes using atmospheric measurements of O2 and CO2.

After completing a BSc in Oceanography at the University of Southampton in 2009, I came to UEA, Norwich to study a MSc in Climate Change. In 2012, I began a Ph.D. at UEA in atmospheric oxygen measurements, which I completed in 2016. My Ph.D. research focussed on making high precision O2 and CO2 measurements from a commercial container ship travelling continuously between Europe and South America. I then used these new measurements to look at equatorial outgassing and latitudinal gradients of O2 and CO2 over the Atlantic.

During my Ph.D. I developed a novel method for quantifying fossil fuel CO2 using the tracer atmospheric potential oxygen (APO), and verified this new method using APO data from Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory, situated on the north Norfolk coast. This work has been continued in the EU funded 'CHE' (CO2 Human Emissions) project. CHE is a new initiative to monitor human related CO2 emissions using a combination of satellite data, surface measurement data and inventory statistical data.

I currently work part-time at UEA on the SONATA project, maintaining shipboard measurements of atmospheric O2 and CO2 across the Atlantic Ocean.

I also work part-time for the University of Heidelberg on quantifying fossil fuel CO2 using APO and radiocarbon data.