David Kyle Johnson

So, yeah, this was not just modeled or anything.

They observed – this was in 2022, a large volcano erupting.

And the volcano belched out a huge amount of methane, which they do.

It's still insignificant compared to person-caused methane release.

Ha-ha.

We got you beat, volcano.

Anthropogenic methane release.

But –

It is a lot.

And the researchers observed using satellite imagery that in the clouds created by the volcano, there was a lot of formaldehyde.

It's not so much that as formaldehyde is a very short half-life, right?

It should only survive for a couple of hours.

Oh, okay.

And so they observed this cloud for days, and there was formaldehyde in the cloud for days, which means it had to be being created for days.

And so they had to figure out, well, what's the process that's creating the formaldehyde and where could that come from?

And what they found is that it can come from the methane in the cloud itself, that that methane was being transformed into formaldehyde and then subsequently into CO2 and water.

And what would do that?

Well, that's a reaction that has to be catalyzed.

And so what they figured out was that the volcanic ash was acting as like a nidus for this reaction.

And the chloride from the sodium chloride in the salt water was catalyzing this reaction to turn formaldehyde ultimately into CO2 and water.