Letter of Intents

Man intents are hard to pin down. I have been finding that to get the right angle or hook you need to involve some (perhaps bogus) personal reflection. Here is my latest LOI that I sent off to SOLAS, a summer school for air-sea gas exchange. I expect to change this for other summer school/workshop/grant LOIs.

Letter of Intent

Thomas Rodengen

At a young age I discovered the outdoors and have never gotten over the excitement of setting off into the wild. Being in the outdoors taught me to rely on my own judgment and where I started to learn things by using all of my senses.

It was in the outdoors that I found my passion for geology, the science of Earth’s systems. The outdoors has ever since been my place of devotion, my sanctuary and more recently my laboratory. I obtained a B.S. and B.A. in Geology and Environmental Studies from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota where I researched lakes and their role in the problem of climate change. I then jumped to the big pond for my master’s work, studying the role of the ocean in mitigating climate change. My sense of wonder for the ocean and its part in climate change continues in my doctoral work.

It is this sense of wonder that has driven me to examine the most prominent ocean CO2 storage options. Eventually, I would like to know whether oceanic storage options compete with other storage solutions (e.g., storage in depleted oil reservoirs). SOLAS can provide me with the tools to assess oceanic storage options through investigation of ocean storage efficiency and deep-sea sediment interactions. Ocean storage efficiency is calculated by the fraction of total mass of injected CO2 that has remained in the ocean relative to what fraction of this CO2 would wind up in the ocean via natural air-sea gas exchange processes. Advancing my understanding of the natural and perturbed air-sea gas exchange processes with much-admired seminars such as “Trace Gasses in the Ocean and Atmosphere” and “Air-water Gas Exchange” will provide me with information to populate oceanic models and calculations of ocean storage efficiency. Additionally, I wish to investigate the effects of interactions between deep-sea sediments (e.g., CaCO3) and stored CO2 in order to optimize the shift of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean in modeling. Offering seminars such as “Biogeochemical Changes over Long Time-scales” and “Oceanic Biogeochemical Modeling” can help me model the shift of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean in equilibrium, buffering the effect of CO2 on other marine systems (e.g., pH).

Having the opportunity to study air-sea gas exchange first hand and inquire to the top researchers about these topics will undoubtedly benefit my research into formulating the comparison criteria between oceanic storage options and ultimately geologic options.

Thank you very much for taking the time to review my application. If you require further information please don’t hesitate to ask. I can’t wait to get outside and start the SOLAS program.

Cheers,

Thomas Rodengen