David Catling, University of Washington, Seattle

David Catling
dcatling@u.washington.edu

David Catling, University of Washington (UW), Seattle. For more info on my research, see this page.

I am jointly appointed to UW's Astrobiology Program and the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. I am also an adjunct professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences

Research Interests:

Planetary Atmospheres and Climate; The Coupled Evolution of Planetary Surfaces and Atmospheres.
Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere and the Co-evolution of Life and Biogeochemical Cycles
Involvement with NASA's missions to the planet Mars :

data analysis from the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters
Science Team member for NASA's Phoenix lander, which landed on Mars in 2008.

Mailing Address:

Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences,
University of Washington
Box 351310, Seattle WA 98195-1310
U.S.A.

Abbreviated Biography:

D.Phil (1994) in the Dept Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, England
1995-2001, at the Planetary Systems Branch, Space Science Division, NASA Ames Research Center, California.

with co-affiliations:

1996-1998 U.S. National Research Council
1998-2001 Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, California
2001- on the faculty of the University of Washington
2005-2008 - European Union Marie Curie Chair in Earth and Planetary System Science at the University of Bristol, England

Some Taught Courses, since 2002

Planetary Sciences and Astrobiology (ASTR 497C / ESS 490F) - autumn 2002
Astrobiology Disciplines (Co-taught) (ASTBIO 501) - autumn 2002
Planetary Atmospheres (ATMS 555) - winter 2003
Instruments and Observations in Atmospheric Sciences (ATMS 451) - spring 2003, spring 2004
Astrobiology Special Topics (ASTBIO 502): autumn 2003; next in autumn 2009 with the theme of "Life on Mars"
Climate and Climate Change (ATMS 211) - winter 2004

Some Projects:

Principal Investigator for NASA Exobiology project: Evolution of Oxygen Atmospheres on Habitable Planets with Application to Life Detection and Advanced Life.

Co-Investigator for NASA Mars Data Analysis project: Condensate Clouds on Mars from Mars Global Surveyor.

Principal Investigator for NASA Mars Data Analysis project: Wind Processes and the Evolution of the Martian Surface Using Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey Data.

Principal Investigator for NASA Planetary Geology and Geophysics project: Aqueous Chemical Modeling of Sedimentation on Early Mars with Application to Surface-Atmosphere Evolution.

Co-Investigator on NASA Planetary Geology and Geophysics project: Aqueous Geochemical Models for Cold Planets


Co-Investigator on Matador (Mars Atmosphere and Dust in the Optical and Radio). We compared the physics of dust devils on Earth with their larger counterparts on Mars. To the right is a photo of one the dust devils our team saw near the small town of Eloy, AZ, between Phoenix and Tucson. We measured dust devils using a mobile platform instrumented with wind, temperature, pressure, sound, electric field, and radio sensors.


Co-investigator on Phoenix, a Mars Lander (shown right), which was NASA's first Mars Scout Program, mission, which landed in 2008. Phoenix investigated volatiles (especially water), habitability, and climate at a high-latitude site on Mars where NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered evidence of ice in the soil.
In collaboration with Roger Buick, I have also studied extreme climate swings at the Permian-Triassic (250 million years ago) when the largest mass extinction in animal history occurred. We inferred drastic climate change using carbon isotope data from the Blue Mountains, near Sydney, Australia. To the right is my view of Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains in 2001. Triassic sandstone overlies Permian coal, with the boundary roughly at the tree line near the base of the waterfall. Charles Darwin looked out upon this very same scene in 1836. "Jan 18, 1836: Very early in the morning, I walked about three miles to see Govett's Leap...These valleys...are most remarkable. Great arm-like bays...penetrate the sandstone platform; on the other hand, the platform often sends promontories into the valleys, and even leaves in them great, almost insulated, masses." - C. R. Darwin, Chapter 19, The Voyage of the Beagle.

Co-Investigator on the Pascal Mission, a proposed NASA mission to place a network of 24 climate stations on Mars that monitor its climate for up to 10 Mars years (19 Earth years). Pascal was selected by NASA for pre-study in 2001.

Textbook

Along with Prof. Jim Kasting from Penn State University, I'm (still) writing the following book, aimed at graduate students and researchers:

Atmospheric Evolution on Inhabited and Lifeless Worlds,
Cambridge University Press, to be published.

Publications.

See my Publications Page.


SO WHAT IS ASTROBIOLOGY ANYWAY? The UW Astrobiology Program allows graduate students to take courses and do some research outside their main discipline to broaden their scientific horizons. Astrobiology seeks to address three basic questions: (1) What's the history of life? (2) What's the future of life? (3) Is there life elsewhere? Today's atmosphere and biosphere are coupled chemical systems because all the important gases (O₂, N₂, CO₂, etc.) with the sole exception of argon are biologically mediated to some degree. There is still fundamental work to be done: there is no theory of "atmospheric composition" as such. Research on the chemical history of the atmosphere bears on the origin and history of life on Earth, as well as the future of life. It is also linked to the question of life elsewhere.