Researchers Share Results of Massive Air Study

NASA scientist Stephanie Vay spent last summer chasing bad air. Aboard a DC-8 loaded with instruments, she and other researchers trolled the sky for 10 hours a day, measuring the atmosphere.

Vay’s data from those trips showed an unusual pattern — near the top of the troposphere carbon dioxide existed in varying concentrations. Scientists generally have assumed that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, was mixed evenly at that altitude.

Vay’s are just one set of results from a massive air study conducted last July and August that scientists called the largest effort to map air quality from the ground to 40,000 feet (12,000 meters). It involved 200 scientists from NASA, University of New Hampshire, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Canada, Britain, Germany and elsewhere who pooled their results in a massive database. Scientists from the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research are meeting this week at the University of New Hampshire to present their initial findings.

ENN