Lucy Carpenter

The 2024 Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal is awarded to Lucy Carpenter for establishing a critical link between the production of trace gases in and over the oceans, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change.

Lucy Carpenter is internationally prominent and highly regarded in the atmospheric science community for her work on atmosphere – ocean interactions, providing an unique perspective of a part of the atmosphere that covers about 70% of our planet. In her studies she combines laboratory, field measurement and modelling methods. Her perspective includes the marine biosphere, which can be a main source of halogenated trace gases to the atmosphere. She is a (co-)author of seminal articles on halogen chemistry in the marine boundary layer, in particular involving reactive iodine and bromine compounds and their role in oxidation processes and ozone photochemistry. These compounds also play an important role in new particle formation. Lucy Carpenter established a measurement station at Cape Verde, which has become a leading atmospheric observatory, performing highly sensitive gas chromatography–mass spectrometry measurements, which revealed extensive halogen-mediated ozone destruction over the tropical Atlantic Ocean. She is a highly productive and successful atmospheric chemist, who contributed both to excellent science and its communication to policy makers.