JGM (Sjoerd) Barten, PhD

Sjoerd Barten has obtained his PhD degree at the Meteorology & Air Quality group of Wageningen University in April 2024. During his PhD research he studied the surface exchange of climate-active trace gases in the Arctic region. Specifically, this project was part of the MOSAiC expedition, a large interdiscipliary campaign where the icebreaker RV Polarstern docked itself in the Arctic sea ice for a full year. On the local scale, his research focuses on optimally combining these novel observations with state-of-the-art sea-ice and atmospheric models to quantify the exchange of trace gases such as ozone, dimethylsufide, carbon dioxide and methane in the Arctic. On the larger scale, he studies the role of mesoscale weather systems in transporting air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and black carbon to the Central Arctic, where local emissions are generally absent.

Since 2023 he continues to work at Wageningen University, developing and maintaining observational sites and data portals at the Meteorology & Air Quality group, for example the MAQ-Observations portal. He is the main point of contact for data management within the group, and makes sure that all observational data is quality controlled and distributed in near-real time in a FAIR way. Furthermore, he is involved in development and application of High Performance Computing systems and various atmospheric models. In terms of research, his focus remains in quantifying the causes and consequences of Arctic climate change using both in-situ observations and models at various scales.