Scot Miller
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas for the climate after carbon dioxide. It lasts only about 9 to 12 years in the air, compared with centuries for carbon dioxide, but traps roughly 28 times more heat over a hundred-year span, which makes cutting it an attractive near-term lever.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
methane
greenhouse gases
climate change
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- 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.
- Evaluate the changing contribution of large emitters and super-emitters of methane in North America using satellite observations from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI).
- Estimate the spatial distribution and year-to-year variability of methane fluxes from wetlands in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
- Quantify relationships between wetland methane fluxes and key environmental drivers in order to develop more accurate process models of wetland methane emissions.
More about the research
The problem is bookkeeping: nobody knows precisely how much methane North America emits, from where, or how those emissions have shifted as oil and gas production grew. This project sets out to quantify methane emissions across the United States, Canada and Mexico over nearly two decades.
Why it matters
Federal and state agencies have set methane reduction targets, but current emission inventories carry large uncertainties. Independent, observation-based estimates, including the identification of previously unaccounted sources and individual super-emitters, could show whether reductions are actually happening and help guide and evaluate policies aimed at curbing a potent greenhouse gas. Better wetland models would also sharpen projections of natural methane feedbacks.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christopher Butenhoff
Portland State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
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.
Shawn Fraver
University of Maine, ME·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify how methanogens (methane-producing microbes) and methanotrophs (methane-consuming microbes) in Howland Forest soils drive methane flux across moisture and other environmental gradients, using microbial community profiling.
Donatella Zona
San Diego State University, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Extend year-round CO2 and CH4 flux records from five Arctic eddy covariance towers in Alaska to a 20+ year CO2 and 11-year CH4 dataset across moisture and latitude gradients.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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