Current Post: Professor

Room Number: 01.37D

Telephone: 01603 593761 (+44 1603 593761)

Fax: 01603 591327 (+44 1603 591327)

Email: a.watson@uea.ac.uk

Web Page: Personal web page; Research group web page

Publications: EPrints Digital Repository

Research Interests

Global biogeochemical cycles, climate, and the interactions between them. In particular, processes influencing atmospheric carbon dioxide, (both natural variations in the past and the sinks for anthropogenic CO2) and atmospheric oxygen. Transport and ventilation of the modern and paleo-oceans.

Biography

For my early career, I studied the evolution of Earth's and other planets' atmospheres before moving to the marine laboratories at Plymouth and becoming more ocean-oriented. I worked there from 1981-1996 before moving to UEA. I developed tracer techniques that can be used to perform a new class of large-scale experiments in the ocean, and in collaborative experiments through the 1990s I used these techniques directly to observe the slow rates of mixing in the open ocean, and to show by release experiments that iron is a critical limiting nutrient for plankton. My group at UEA works on observations of the ocean carbon system and ocean physics using tracers, funded by EU and NERC grants. We also use a variety of models to investigate the processes affecting atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations through time. I was elected FRS in 2003 and awarded the EGU's Nansen Medal for "fundamental contributions to the understanding of the integrated oceanic system" in 2004.

Significant publications

• Schuster, U., and Watson, A.J. (2007) A variable and decreasing sink for atmospheric CO2 in the North Atlantic. J. Geophys. Res., 112, C11006, doi:10.1029/2006JC003941.
• Watson, A.J. (2008). Implications of an anthropic model for the evolution of complex life and intelligence. Astrobiology Journal 8, 175-185. doi: 10.1089/ast.2006.0115. 

• Goldblatt, C., T. M. Lenton and A. J. Watson (2006). "Bistability of atmospheric oxygen and the great oxidation." Nature 443, 683-686, doi:10.1038/nature05169

• Watson, A. J., and Naveira-Garabato, A. C. (2006) The role of Southern Ocean mixing and upwelling in glacial-interglacial atmospheric CO2 change. Tellus 58 B, 73-87. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0889.2005.00167.x

• Bergman, N. M., Lenton, T. M., and Watson, A. J. (2004). COPSE: a new model of biogechemical cycling over Phanerozoic time. Am. J. Sci 304,397-437. DOI: 10.2475/ajs.304.5.397

• Gascard, J.-C., Watson, A. J., Messias, M.-J., Olson, K. A., Johannessen, T., and Simonsen, K. (2002). Long –lived vortices as a mode of deep ventilation in the Greenland Sea. Nature 416, 525-527. DOI: 10.1038/416525a

• Bakker, D. C. E., Watson, A. J. and Law, C. S. (2001). Southern Ocean iron enrichment promotes inorganic carbon drawdown. Deep Sea Research Part II, 48, 2483-2507.

• Law, C. S., and Watson, A. J. (2001). Determination of Persian Gulf Water transport and oxygen utilization rates using SF¬6 as a novel transient tracer. Geophys. Res. Lett. 28, 815-818.

Page last updated 25 October 2011