he/him
Dr. Kelvin Bates is an atmospheric chemist who works at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Kelvin grew up in Seattle and went to The Evergreen School through eighth grade, and then went to Lakeside for high school (where he met and became good friends with Ms. Contreras!). He was a self-described "shy bookworm" until he discovered theater as a sophomore at Lakeside (when he was in a musical with Ms. Estill!) and started performing in as many plays and musicals as he could. However, he still loved his math and science classes (like Organic Chemistry, which he and Ms. Contreras took together), so it was difficult for him to decide what to do with his life. Kelvin chose to go to Davidson College in North Carolina, where he could study science and stay actively involved in theater. When he's not working, Kelvin still likes acting and singing--a few years ago he was in a community theater production of Cabaret (which he was first in as an 11th grader at Lakeside). He also likes hiking in the Rocky Mountains, biking, running, and making maps!
Kelvin uses planes to help him take air samples for his research
Image courtesy of Kelvin BatesKelvin studies how different organic chemicals behave in the atmosphere. An organic chemical is one that is mostly made of carbon and hydrogen. Some organic compounds also have oxygen and/or nitrogen, and occasionally other chemicals as well. A chemical's "behavior" means what it reacts with, under what conditions it will react, how often it reacts, and how long it will stay in the atmosphere before it breaks down. Much of Kelvin's work focuses on a compound called isoprene. Many deciduous trees, shrubs, and other vegetation release vast quantities of isoprene into the atmosphere--scientists think that it helps protect them against heat stress somehow. Under certain conditions, isoprene can react to form a kind of smog--it's what's responsible for the "smoke" in the Smoky Mountains! It can also react to form ozone, though, which can be harmful for human health when it's lower in the atmosphere. Kelvin wants to better understand the life of an isoprene molecule under different conditions, and this involves lots of field work to collect air samples, as well as time in the lab. As Kelvin describes it, "We basically have a big plastic bag in a climate-controlled room where we can pump in very specific mixes of chemicals and see if they form ozone, or particles, or what kinds of chemical reactions they undergo. "
The chemical structure of isoprene
Image source: Wikimedia CommonsThe mist over the Great Smoky Mountains is caused by isoprene reacting with other chemicals in the air
Photo credit: Chris Mobley"I loved my chemistry courses back at Lakeside and throughout college, but I really decided to pursue research as a career when I did an internship with NASA the summer after college. I had previously thought research would keep me cooped up in a lab all day, but I learned there's tons of variety in the role of a scientist -- that summer, we flew planes around Southern California sampling air quality, drove around oil fields collecting air samples, and even took a research ship out into the ocean near Los Angeles to measure gases seeping out of underwater vents. The hands-on, exploratory nature of the job really hooked me!"
"My favorite part of my job is how varied it is -- there's always something new! In any given week I'll spend part of my time teaching, part of my time listening to science presentations, part of my time running computer models of the atmosphere, part of my time sampling air pollution outdoors, part of my time doing hands-on experiments forming smog in our lab, and probably part of my time doing something I've never done before! It always feels like I'm learning new things and it always feels like I'm exploring, and on top of that, it always feels like my research is pushing toward an important goal of making our air cleaner and healthier for humans and the planet.Â
I also love the freedom of my job -- as long as we're answering important questions about air quality, we get to use pretty much any tool we can come up with to do so. And sometimes that means we get to invent new tools of our own! It also means we get to do a lot of collaborating with really smart and interesting people to answer those questions."
"I remember getting to graduate school and thinking I was entirely out of my depth; it felt like everyone around me was better prepared, having already taken all these specialized classes and gotten plenty of research experience or even published papers already. I felt like I knew nothing compared to all my classmates. But it turned out to be an important lesson in thinking like a scientist, because it's all about accepting that we don't know the answers, and trying to come up with clever ways to work those answers out for ourselves. Sometimes not knowing the answer right away is ideal, because it gets you thinking creatively about how to solve a problem or test a hypothesis, and that's what science is all about."
In 2021, Kelvin published the results of a study about a chemical called methanol in a region of the atmosphere called the troposphere. The troposphere is the layer of the atmosphere closest to earth, and is where nearly all weather takes place and is the layer humans interact with. Methanol is an organic chemical compound that, in it's liquid form, is toxic to humans and has a variety of industrial uses. Kelvin was interested in methanol in its gas form--it's the second most common organic gas in the atmosphere behind methane, but comparatively little is known about it. Reactions involving methanol in the troposphere influence the amount of ozone and highly reactive chemicals called hydroxyl radicals. Methanol can also react to form carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, both of which are toxic to humans.
Specifically, Kelvin wanted to better understand the sources and sinks of methanol in the troposphere. Sources are things that produce a gas, and sinks are things that remove the gas from the atmosphere. For example--internal combustion engines in cars are a source of carbon dioxide gas, while forests are a sink because plants consume carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Many studies have been done on atmospheric methanol, and while they all tend to agree on how much methanol there is in the atmosphere, there is a lot of uncertainty around what the sources and sinks are, and how much of a role each plays in adding or removing methanol from the air. To collect data, Kelvin's colleagues flew all around the world in an airplane, collecting air samples as they went. They used computer model of global atmospheric chemistry to analyze their samples.
Kelvin on a similar data collection expedition to the one for this study
Image courtesy of Kelvin BatesA picture from the data collection flight for this study. Much of their data collection happened over remote areas of the ocean
Image credit: Kelvin Bates and eos.orgThey showed that, contrary to what previous studies had found, the ocean is not a major source of methanol. Phytoplankton at the ocean's surface does create a fair amount of methanol, but most of it quickly falls back into the water, making the ocean a net sink rather than a source (meaning the amount that the ocean consumes outweighs the amount it creates). Something surprising they found was that, in remote areas of the troposphere (like over the ocean or Antarctica, where human activities aren't influencing things as much), chemical reactions were the largest sources of methanol. Chemicals called methylperoxy radicals react with hydroxyl radicals to form methanol. Both of these chemicals are highly reactive because they're one or more electrons short of being "stable", so they aggressively react with other chemicals to "steal" their electrons. Kelvin and his team found that around 60% of methanol in remote regions came from these reactions, which is an important finding because these reactions hadn't previously been factored into global atmospheric chemistry models. Understanding more about how gasses like methanol behave in the troposphere has important implications for climate change and human health.
"STEM is a hugely broad category, and the career paths or types of research you can do (if you're interested in being a research scientist) are incredibly varied! So take the time to explore as many possibilities and opportunities as you can, because you never know when you might discover a niche that sparks your passion. I almost didn't apply for the NASA internship that got me into atmospheric science, but I'm very glad I did!"