Abstract

Hydrogen could be used as an alternate to fossil fuels if generated sustainably. However, leakage of hydrogen into the atmosphere could have further repercussions on climate change. Atmospheric hydrogen has an indirect greenhouse effect due to its impacts on methane, troposperic ozone and stratospheric water vapour. Understanding the lifetime of hydrogen and its effect on methane is vital to quantify its impact on climate. The main destructive pathways of hydrogen are via OH reaction (30%) and soil update (70%). The OH used in hydrogen destruction  is known to cause a decrease in methane destruction (which is also primarily destroyed by OH), while destruction of H2 by soil uptake is poorly constrained and difficult to model. We implement a hydrogen soil deposition scheme into a model with pre-existing interactive methane to create a fully interactive hydrogen-methane atmospheric chemistry model. We examine the impacts of having both interactive hydrogen and methane and show how it compares to observations.