Euan Nisbet

Euan Nisbet’s research is broadly in two areas of Earth Science.

Early Earth work is based on fieldwork in the Archaean (2.5 to 4 billion year old) rocks of Canada, Zimbabwe/South Africa and Australia. Work on the early Earth is summarised by a Treatise on Geochemistry chapter with CMR Fowler (2nd ed 2013), and by NT Arndt and EG Nisbet in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (2012).

Research into modern and glacial atmospheres has mainly focused on methane in the modern air, including the role of methane in Arctic climate change, methane hydrates and their role in global warming, and the task of assessing present day atmospheric methane burden. The atmospheric laboratory at Royal Holloway is a key centre for measurement of carbon isotopes in methane. Current work includes major projects on Arctic and tropical atmospheric methane budgets.

Nisbet leads MOYA: the global methane budget. This is a UK NERC 'Highlight' consortium with 14 partner institutions that studies methane across the planet, with aircraft and ground field campaigns in African and South America, as well as monitoring greenhouse gases at a number of stations from the Arctic to the Antarctic and on a ship travelling from north to south in the Atlantic.

Euan Nisbet has written three single author books and edited several multi—author volumes. The Young Earth was a core text on Archaean geology. Leaving Eden (CUP) is translated into German. There have also been Chinese translations of Leaving Eden and Arndt and Nisbet (eds) Komatiites. Much of Project MOYA's work is scheduled to be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in mid-2021. He is a an honorary fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.