Archive of Spotlight Feature Articles

Congressional team takes an educational trip to observe climate and atmospheric research in Antarctica

By Carol Knight

The Global Monitoring Division of NOAA's newly formed Earth System Research Laboratory operates atmospheric measuring instruments and facilities literally all over the world, mostly in very remote places far from big cities and seats of government. So it's a big deal when one of our most important - and most remote - monitoring stations was visited early in January by a delegation of the United States Congress.

When the sun comes up and doesn't go down for six months, and when the “warm” summer temperatures can reach all the way up to zero degrees Fahrenheit, things get busy for NOAA's South Pole Observatory and other research agencies in Antarctica. It is during the Southern Hemisphere summer (December-March) that work on construction projects can really get going, and indeed, there is an important project now underway as the National Science Foundation oversees work on a new South Pole Station.

And of course if anyone is going to come for a visit to the world's coldest continent, summertime is the time they'll do it.

So it was that just after the New Year (2006), staff at NOAA's Atmospheric Baseline Observatory helped to brief a congressional delegation led by U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and John Sununu (R-NH) of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and also including Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and 10 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, most of whom also are members of science-related committees.

NOAA's global monitoring staffer Andy Clarke briefed the senators and representatives on the measurements conducted at NOAA's Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. These include carbon dioxide measurements, which first began at the South Pole with air samples taken during the 1957 International Geophysical Year. NOAA began continuous operations at the South Pole station in January of 1977.

Today, concentrations of 60 trace gases; broad aspects of solar radiation; surface, total column ozone, and balloon-borne ozone profiles; and aerosols are monitored year around by NOAA through the efforts of two staff living for a year at the South Pole.

(left) At the South Pole, NOAA scientists release a balloon that carries instruments to measure a vertical column of ozone up to 32 kilometers. (right) Three-dimensional representation of the latitudinal distribution of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the marine boundary layer. Data from the NOAA CMDL cooperative air sampling network were used. The surface represents data smoothed in time and latitude. The contribution from the NOAA CMDL South Pole flask sampling effort is shown inset as flask monthly means. (larger image)

The delegation, including congressional staff, showed interest in the results of NOAA's consistent and continual South Pole monitoring. For example, they saw an important graph showing the steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from fossil fuel combustion rising from 312 parts-per-million (ppm) in 1957 to 378 ppm today.

In addition, they learned about NOAA's documenting the onset and evolution of the Antarctic Ozone Hole, as well as the decrease of atmospheric ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in response to the Montréal Protocol. The Global Monitoring group continually measures ozone over the Pole, maintaining a record of ozone loss in the Antarctic spring.

Other highlights of the South Pole station include the discovery that the effluents from the 1991 Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippine Islands reached the South Pole, reducing direct solar radiation at the surface by 18 percent, the largest decrease observed at any of the NOAA Baseline Observatories in Barrow, Alaska; Mauna Loa, Hawaii; and American Samoa.

1/23/2006

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