University College
Professor Gideon Henderson
Professor of Earth Sciences, Department of Earth Sciences
Academic profile
About
Professor Gideon Henderson is an environmental scientist and science advisor, with particular expertise in geochemistry. He is an expert in the carbon cycle, long-term climate change in the past and future, and the role of the ocean in global change. He led past Royal Society work on approaches to CO₂ removal from the atmosphere and continues to research the science and policy of this subject.
He served from 2019-2025 as Chief Scientific Advisor to Defra.
Expertise
- Climate records
- Carbon capture
- Carbon cycle
- Greenhouse gas removal
- Oceans
- Ocean chemistry
- Sea level
Selected publications
- The physiological response of contrasting coccolithophore species to ocean alkalinity enhancement (2025)
- Arctic speleothems reveal nearly permafrost-free Northern Hemisphere in the late Miocene (2025)
- Evidence for the role of tropical plumes in driving mid-Holocene north-west Sahara rainfall (2025)
- Current rates of CO2 removal due to rock weathering in the UK (2024)
- The enhanced weathering potential of a range of silicate and carbonate additions in a UK agricultural soil (2024)
- Implications of the riverine response to enhanced weathering for CO₂ removal in the UK (2023)
- Soil core study indicates limited CO2 removal by enhanced weathering in dry croplands in the UK (2022)
- Dissolved trace element concentrations and fluxes in the Irrawaddy, Salween, Sittaung and Kaladan Rivers (2022)