Roberta C. Hamme Assistant Professor School of Earth and Ocean Sciences University of Victoria

Understanding what drives the cycles of gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen is essential to understanding our changing planet. I measure a suite of inert and bioactive gases, like argon and oxygen, to investigate oceanic processes. Dissolved inert gases can tell us about how gases move between the atmosphere and the ocean and what processes drive those fluxes, such as rapid cooling and bubbles created by breaking waves. Dissolved oxygen measurements indicate the productivity of ocean waters. Atmospheric measurements can give us a globally integrated picture of the ocean uptake or release of gases. These different approaches allow my group to investigate a large variety of processes across many spatial and temporal scales.

Our most recent project, just published in Geophysical Research Letters, investigates the cause of a massive plankton bloom in the subarctic northeast Pacific. We find that ash from the explosive volcanic eruption of Kasatochi Volcano in the Aleutian Islands fertilized this whole area with iron leading to the largest bloom ever observed in this region. Summary for the general public

The Download page contains both dissolved gas databases from my published papers and MatLab scripts for gas solubility and other useful seawater related quantities. I invite collaboration with people interested in using these gases as tracers, particularly modelers.