PostDoc
Dr Weimu Xu
Weimu Xu has specific research and teaching interest in palaeoclimatology, carbon cycling and climate change mitigation.
Weimu Xu has specific research and teaching interest in palaeoclimatology, carbon cycling and climate change mitigation. She received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship award (funded by the European Commission) whilst at Trinity College Dublin, working on Paleocene greenhouse climate and the effect of basalt weathering on carbon sequestration. Before that, she was an iCRAG (SFI Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences) postdoctoral researcher at TCD, exploring a novel negative carbon emission technology using enhanced plant-mediated silicate weathering. Before moving to Ireland, she was a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), where she advised policymakers on evidence-based policymaking in energy and climate science. Previously, she worked as a geophysicist in Shell China on hydrocarbon exploration projects. For her PhD at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, she applied sedimentary and geochemical proxies to understand the fundamental processes leading to carbon burial in marine and continental settings during major environmental/climatic change events in the geological past, e.g. the Mesozoic Oceanic Anoxic Events.
Current projects:
PALEOcene greenhouse climate and the effect of basalt weathering on CARBON sequestration (PALEOCARBON: funded by the European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action). The project aims to: (1) Quantify elevated Paleogene pCO2, temperature and precipitation levels using fossil leaves; (2) Constrain processes & intensity of silicate weathering and carbon drawdown potential in Paleocene basalts, as part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province; (3) Quantify elemental uptake of plants grown in high pCO2 laboratory conditions, to constrain the role of plant in mediating weathering processes.
International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 396 on Mid-Norwegian Margin Magmatism and Paleoclimate Implications (Aug-Oct 2021; participation funded by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications and Geological Survey Ireland): Post-cruise research aims to constrain potential links between North Atlantic Igneous Province volcanic activity and associated carbon degassing and changing atmospheric pCO2, to climatic warming, enhanced hydrological cycling and changing global weathering rates.