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Cape Town, South Africa (29 May 2025) \u2014 <\/em>Dr Katye Altieri, Associate Professor of Oceanography at the University of Cape Town, is the winner of the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust\u2019s New Frontiers Research Award for 2025. The professor believes that the answer to one of the Earth\u2019s most pressing problems, air pollution, could actually be hidden in the sea!<\/p>\n In the Prof’s words:<\/p>\n Imagine for a moment standing on a sun-soaked beach, the surf crashing against the shore, and inhaling the salty, moist sea air. It\u2019s invigorating.<\/em><\/p>\n But is it really? Hundreds of years ago, perhaps, but what about now? How do the ocean and the air interact in the presence of human-created air pollution, specifically nitrogen, and how does this relationship impact climate change?<\/em><\/p>\n The simple truth is, we don\u2019t know \u2013 and I want to find out.<\/em><\/p>\n Our oceans are as important to life on Earth as the air we breathe. An enormous carbon sink, they help to remove the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>) from the atmosphere, which is of course a good thing.<\/em><\/p>\n As a matter of fact, nitrogen helps the oceans to remove CO2<\/sub> from the atmosphere. The problem is, too much of it can spur the production and release of nitrous oxide (N2<\/sub>O), another greenhouse gas that is 300 times as potent as CO2<\/sub>. That is clearly not a good thing.<\/em><\/p>\n As with everything in nature, things work when there\u2019s a balance; invariably, however, we humans throw out that equilibrium through our activities. That\u2019s why we\u2019re struggling so much with the issue of climate change, so much of which has to do with the pollution of our atmosphere.<\/em><\/p>\n We have doubled the amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere through activities such as fossil fuel combustion and agriculture. That nitrogen, even from far inland, is swept out to sea and settles in the ocean.<\/em><\/p>\n But we don\u2019t know exactly how much pollution-derived nitrogen reaches the open ocean. We don\u2019t know exactly what happens when it settles in the ocean.<\/em><\/p>\n And we face a conundrum: does it increase the ocean\u2019s ability to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, or emit more deleterious greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?<\/em><\/p>\n The main reason why we don\u2019t know is because climate change science \u2013 a large and diverse field of study \u2013 is siloed in terms of scientific disciplines and policy frameworks, and the connection between air pollution and the ocean thus isn\u2019t properly assessed. Atmospheric scientists and oceanographers do their own research and even speak their own scientific languages, and governments and their responses mostly don\u2019t consider this aspect.<\/em><\/p>\n I intend to help change that, however, by forging new ways of scientific thinking about both our atmosphere and our oceans, helping us to build knowledge in ways we haven\u2019t before. As the recipient of the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust\u2019s 2025 New Frontiers Research Award, my mission is to come up with the evidence that supports (or doesn\u2019t support) various air quality, climate and scientific arguments.<\/em><\/p>\n The New Frontiers award affords me the opportunity to lead a world-class research team, including the very best scientists; three exceptional South African women.<\/em><\/p>\n Supporting them will be postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Together, we will establish a shared language and methodological approach to the complex interactions between air pollution, nitrogen cycling and oceanic greenhouse gas fluxes.<\/em><\/p>\n This is how we will do it:<\/em><\/p>\n In many ways, South Africa \u2013 Cape Town in particular \u2013 is the ideal place to do this research. As one of the world\u2019s largest coal-burning countries, the country contributes significantly to atmospheric nitrogen emissions.<\/em><\/p>\n Uniquely, we have three diverse ocean systems, allowing for comparative study and measurement, within striking distance:<\/em><\/p>\n The New Frontiers Research Award offers several benefits: its long-term nature (it is a five-year award) will allow for the building of impactful partnerships; it will promote integrated science, allowing for fieldwork that can be built into models that quantify the big picture for us; and, importantly, it will help scientific observationalists and modellers to connect and network.<\/em><\/p>\n Reducing nitrogen emissions may make the oceans\u2019 CO2<\/sub> sink smaller, yet we cannot justify stopping nitrogen clean-ups. It\u2019s possible that atmospheric pollution could have little impact on the oceans \u2013 or it could be massive. We just don\u2019t know. So this needs to be understood and quantified; only then can we formulate appropriate environmental policy.<\/em><\/p>\n The integration between the atmosphere and the ocean is, from a scientific perspective, inherently global. So what we learn from the oceans around South Africa, a country that already punches above its weight in the climate space, will have bearing on our entire planet. This is a very exciting prospect.<\/em><\/p>\n Imagine once more that beach, the glare off the sand and the mewing gulls, and the scent of the sea air. It\u2019s at an intersection that could provide us with some of the most fundamental learning ever of how our planet works \u2013 and, for better or worse, how we influence it.<\/em><\/p>\nThe Answer to the Impact of Air Pollution Lies in\u2026the Deep Blue Sea<\/h3>\n
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\nSources: Email Submission\u00a0<\/em><\/h6>\n
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