Christopher Butenhoff
Portland State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Ethane and methane are gases released by oil and natural gas activity, wildfires and other sources. When they break down in the air they help form ozone and fine particles, and they affect how well the atmosphere cleans itself of other pollutants.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
ethane
trace gases
atmospheric chemistry
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Intercalibrate early-1980s ethane measurements from the Oregon Graduate Institute global network with recent NOAA surface flask data so that historic and modern records can be compared.
- Analyze ethane in archived air samples collected at Cape Meares, Oregon, between 1978 and 1998 to extend the historical record of this hydrocarbon.
- Customize the GEOS-Chem High Performance atmospheric chemistry model for ethane and use inverse modeling to estimate how ethane sources changed during its steep decline from the 1980s to the 2000s.
More about the research
Ethane levels fell steeply between the 1980s and the 2000s, but the reasons for that drop, and what it says about changing emissions, are not well understood.
Why it matters
Knowing how ethane and methane sources have changed over decades could sharpen estimates of emissions from oil and natural gas operations, wildfires and biomass burning. Such estimates matter for air quality, since these gases help form ozone and particles, and for climate, since ethane influences how long methane, a strong greenhouse gas, stays in the air. The project also builds trace-gas research capacity at Portland State University.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Scot Miller
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Quantify how human-caused methane emissions across the United States, Canada and Mexico changed from 2007 to 2026, combining aircraft, tower and satellite observations with inverse modeling that infers emissions from measured concentrations.
Rawad Saleh
University of Georgia, GA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Conduct three intensive measurement campaigns of simulated wildland and prescribed fires at the U.S. Forest Service Center for Forest Disturbance Science combustion facility, testing how fuel type, firing technique and moisture content alter emissions of light-absorbing particles.
Colleen Jones
Utah State University, UT·Earth & Environmental Science
Conduct a year-long field campaign near Salt Lake City measuring elemental and divalent mercury, related oxidants, and chemical and weather variables, using a dual-channel continuous mercury system that avoids the low bias of standard methods.
The school
Portland State University: 3 labs on PI Pages, $52M a year on research, 92 research doctorates a year.
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