About

David Archer is a professor affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he has been recognized by the Dean of the College, Melina Hale, to deliver the annual Aims of Education address to incoming students. His work and public engagements include speaking at significant university events such as the Latke-Hamentaschen Debate, where he addresses contemporary social issues, including the mention of hostages in a predominantly Jewish audience. Archer's interests extend to neuroanatomy education, as evidenced by his recorded brain dissections designed to provide a neuroanatomical framework for students, covering development and dissections of sheep and human brains to illustrate brain parts and their fit within the cranium. His laboratory research has contributed to understanding social behaviors in animals, such as demonstrating the Bystander Effect in rats, published in Science Advances, highlighting how rats are less likely to help in the presence of non-helping conspecifics but may be influenced by naive rats. Archer also reflects on psychological phenomena like the Bystander Effect in human contexts, including its relevance to events such as the George Floyd case. Beyond his scientific work, Archer engages in cultural and historical commentary, including reflections on figures like Frans de Waal and the Queen, and supports artistic endeavors, such as promoting his mother's Watergate sculptures. He is also involved in educational outreach, inviting others to join courses on understanding the brain and promoting his detailed textbook on the subject.

Research topics

• Biology
• Environmental science
• Agronomy
• Microeconomics
• Engineering
• Econometrics
• Geography
• Demography
• Economics
• Natural resource economics
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Fun to read about the whole methane cycle

  2020-04-06

  peer-reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Spatio-temporal evolution of stratigraphic-diffusive methane hydrate reservoirs since the Pliocene along Shenhu continental slope, northern South China sea

  Marine and Petroleum Geology · 2020-12-16 · 8 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Winter Triticale: A Long-Term Cropping Systems Experiment in a Dry Mediterranean Climate

  Agronomy · 2020 · 7 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Agronomy
  • Environmental science
  • Biology

  Triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack) is a cereal feed grain grown annually worldwide on 4.2 million ha. Washington is the leading state for rainfed (i.e., non-irrigated) triticale production in the USA. A 9-year dryland cropping systems project was conducted from 2011 to 2019 near Ritzville, WA to compare winter triticale (WT) with winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) (WW) grown in (i) a 3-year rotation of WT-spring wheat (SW) -no-till summer fallow (NTF) (ii) a 3-year rotation of WW-SW-undercutter tillage summer fallow (UTF) and (iii) a 2-year WW-UTF rotation, We measured grain yield, grain yield components, straw production, soil water dynamics, and effect on the subsequent SW wheat crop (in the two 3-year rotations). Enterprise budgets were constructed to evaluate the production costs and profitability. Grain yields averaged over the years were 5816, 5087, and 4689 kg/ha for WT, 3-year WW, and 2-year WW, respectively (p < 0.001). Winter triticale used slightly less water than WW (p = 0.019). Contrary to numerous reports in the literature, WT never produced more straw dry biomass than WW. Winter wheat produced many more stems than WT (p < 0.001), but this was compensated by individual stem weight of WT being 60% heavier than that of WW (p < 0.001). Spring wheat yield averaged 2451 vs. 2322 kg/ha after WT and WW, respectively (p = 0.022). The market price for triticale grain was always lower than that for wheat. Winter triticale produced an average of 14 and 24% more grain than 3-year and 2-year WW, respectively, provided foliar fungal disease control, risk reduction, and other rotation benefits, but was not economically competitive with WW. A 15–21% increase in WT price or grain yield would be necessary for the WT rotation to be as profitable as the 3-year and 2-year WW rotations, respectively.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• an interesting curiosity

  2020-03-27

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This is an interesting, thorough characterization of the distribution of methane trapped within CaCO3 in glacial fore field deposits. The methane is released when the CaCO3 is dissolved in acid, a somewhat aggressive analog for chemical weathering. The authors are very careful not to overstate the implications of their data to the global methane cycle or climate, even though as they point out, the actual quantity of methane is rather high relative to other regional metrics. The primary motivation for investigating this is curiosity, which is a perfectly fine motivation for publication. I would be curious whether the methane has a measurable impact on the microbiology within the sediments; whether there is metabolic energy to be gained by reacting the methane with anything available, and whether RNA or proteomics of some other type of biotech char-

  PublisherDOI

• The ultimate cost of carbon

  Climatic Change · 2020 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Environmental science
  • Natural resource economics

  Abstract We estimate the potential ultimate cost of fossil-fuel carbon to a long-lived human population over a one million–year time scale. We assume that this hypothetical population is technologically stationary and agriculturally based, and estimate climate impacts as fractional decreases in economic activity, potentially amplified by a human population response to a diminished human carrying capacity. Monetary costs are converted to units of present-day dollars by multiplying the future damage fractions by the present-day global world production, and integrated through time with no loss due from time-preference discounting. Ultimate costs of C range from $10k to $750k per ton for various assumptions about the magnitude and longevity of economic impacts, with a best-estimate value of about $100k per ton of C. Most of the uncertainty arises from the economic parameters of the model and, among the geophysical parameters, from the climate sensitivity. We argue that the ultimate cost of carbon is a first approximation of our potential culpability to future generations for our fossil energy use, expressed in units that are relevant to us.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Carbon

  Open Book Publishers · 2020-02-13

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter elucidates the importance of carbon to the Earth system and outlines the global debate on its use and impact. The element manifests itself through a number of reservoirs: the crust and mantle (the overwhelming majority), dissolved forms of inorganic carbon, living organic material and atmospheric trace gases (including the infamous 'greenhouse' variety), representing just 0.00064%, but responsible for the absorption of out-going infra-red radiation from Earth's surface. The chapter then outlines how variations in Earth’s atmospheric levels of CO2 and methane are related to the exchange of carbon between these reservoirs, which combine to act as a global thermostat over geological timescales. These processes have not always been human-induced: the Earth’s history is peppered with periods of volcanic activity, resulting in wild extremes in global temperature. However, the crucial difference in such phenomena and human-induced carbon is the abrupt ‘gorging’ and ‘dumping’ we are engaged in over a relatively minute timeframe, hindering ocean acidity levels in seas from rebalancing. As the first agent sentient of the effect it is having on the Earth’s metabolism, humanity must make unprecedented changes in its relationship to carbon. As the chapter points out, dramatic changes have been enacted before, when urbanized communities have been faced with the consequences of poor sanitation and pollution. However, decisions dictated by market economics or arbitrary, politically-derived thresholds risk making the rate of change simply too slow. The fundamental realization is that our relationship to energy, and where this energy is sourced, must change, fast.

  PublisherDOI

• Effects of oceanographic changes on controlling the stability of gas hydrates and the formation of authigenic carbonates at mud volcanoes and seepage sites on the Iberian margin of the Gulf of Cadiz

  Marine Geology · 2019-03-14 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A model of mercury cycling and isotopic fractionation in the ocean

  2018-03-07 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract. Mercury speciation and isotopic fractionation processes have been incorporated into the HAMOCC offline ocean tracer advection code. The model is fast enough to allow a wide exploration of the sensitivity of the Hg cycle in the oceans, and of human exposure to Hg via monomethyl-Hg incorporation into fish. Vertical particle transport of Hg appears to play a discernable role in setting present-day Hg distributions, which we surmise by the fact that in simulations without particle transport, the high present-day Hg deposition rate leads to an Hg maximum at the sea surface, rather than a subsurface maximum as observed. Hg particle transport has only a relatively small impact on anthropogenic Hg uptake, but it sequesters Hg deeper in the water column, so that excess Hg is retained in the model ocean for longer after anthropogenic Hg deposition is stopped. The concentration of monomethyl Hg is sensitive to its production rate, with model experiments suggesting that human impacts on ocean oxygen concentrations could have as significant an impact on oceanic MMHg concentration as the anthropogenic Hg emission itself. Eight different isotopic fractionation mechanisms are simulated, independently and combined together, to predict their expression in the spatial distributions of isotopic signatures of Hg species in the ocean.

  PublisherDOI

• Responses to reviewer comments

  2018-04-27

  preprint1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A model of mercury cycling and isotopic fractionation in the ocean

  Biogeosciences · 2018-10-26 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract. Mercury speciation and isotopic fractionation processes have been incorporated into the HAMOCC offline ocean tracer advection code. The model is fast enough to allow a wide exploration of the sensitivity of the Hg cycle in the oceans, and of factors controlling human exposure to monomethyl-Hg through the consumption of fish. Vertical particle transport of Hg appears to play a discernable role in setting present-day Hg distributions, which we surmise by the fact that in simulations without particle transport, the high present-day Hg deposition rate leads to an Hg maximum at the sea surface, rather than a subsurface maximum as observed. Hg particle transport has a relatively small impact on anthropogenic Hg uptake, but it sequesters Hg deeper in the water column, so that excess Hg is retained in the model ocean for a longer period of time after anthropogenic Hg deposition is stopped. Among 10 rate constants in the model, steady-state Hg concentrations are most sensitive to reactions that are sources or sinks of Hg(0), the evasion of which to the atmosphere is the dominant sink term in the surface ocean. Isotopic fractionations in the interconversion reactions are most strongly expressed, in the isotopic signatures of dissolved Hg, in reactions that involve the dominant dissolved species, Hg(II), including mass independent fractionation during Hg photoreduction. The Δ199Hg of MMHg in the model, subject to photoreduction fractionation, reproduces the Δ199Hg of fish in the upper 1000 m of the ocean, while the impact of anthropogenic Hg deposition on Hg isotope ratios is essentially negligible.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: A Parameterization of Near-Shore Ocean Chemical Dynamics for Global Ocean Circulation/Carbon Cycle Models

  NSF · $244k · 2003–2008

• Gas Hydrate Deposits below the Arctic Ocean: Response to Glacial Cycles and Global Warming

  NSF · $146k · 2008–2010

• Collaborative Research: Net Carbon Transport and Reaction in the bottom Boundary Layer of an Upwelling Margin

  NSF · $160k · 2007–2010

• Stability of the Ocean Clathrate Reservoir to Anthropogenic Climate Perturbation

  NSF · $217k · 2004–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas F. Stocker

  Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research

  50 shared

• Wallace S. Broecker

  Columbia University

  50 shared

• Nicolas Gruber

  ETH Zurich

  49 shared

• Matthias Hofmann

  49 shared

• Jean Lynch‐Stieglitz

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  49 shared

• E. Maier‐Reimer

  28 shared

• B. A. Buffett

  Planetary Science Institute

  24 shared

• Victor Brovkin

  22 shared

Labs

• Amyoli Internet Research LabPI

Awards & honors

• ACM Fellow
• Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers…
• Technology Review 35 “Top Young Innovators Under 35” award
• ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award
• Sloan Research Fellowship