Greenhouse Gas Cycling in Supraglacial Debris Covers

Research Questions
1. What role do debris covered glaciers play in regional and global cycling of major greenhouse gases? 2. What are the important chemical processes affecting carbon gas exchanges within supraglacial debris cover? 3. What are the rates of gas production and drawdown and are there any controlling factors? 4. Are there spatial and or temporal variabilities of gas exchanges?
Outcomes To successfully quantify the rates of CO2 and CH4 fluxes within a debris covered glacier environment and to provide an explanation as to why these rates occur. The upscaling of these results would be highly significant, due to previous works struggling to do so (Sorensen et al., 2014 and Sievers et al., 2015). Upscaling would be completed using existing global datasets such as the Randolph glacier inventory. Further, in consultation with the supervisors, I would plan to structure the research to produce a strong set of publications in high impact journals. Possibly this could include: i) results of direct measurements of fluxes on glaciers in different locations and the environmental controls; ii