BOULDER, CO — According to their website, the Global Monitoring Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA/ESRL/GMD) “conducts sustained observations and research related to source and sink strengths, trends, and global distributions of atmospheric constituents that are capable of forcing change in the climate of Earth through modification of the atmospheric radiative environment, those that may cause depletion of the global ozone layer, and those that affect baseline air quality."

FRANCE / RUSSIA — With a large percentage of its area covered by forest (800×106 hectares) and huge stocks of carbon (roughly 320 gigatons), Siberia is a significant player in the global carbon budget. Yet, there are many unknowns when it comes to the region’s biogeochemistry and the distribution and emissions of compounds that play a role in tropospheric chemistry and climate change.

BEIJING, CHINA — I had the opportunity to speak with one of our customers, Dr. Zhonghe Pang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, on using water isotopes to understand and mitigate climate change including: land use and ground water recharge, modeling geothermal reservoirs, and testing the CO2 storage capacity of deep saline aquifers.

Dr. Ira Leifer, Paige Farrell and Dan Culling recently completed a methane measurement transect of the southern US while en-route to deliver their Picarro flux analyzer to a waiting ship in Louisiana.

Few scientific meetings match the level of organization and attendee engagement as does this Global Monitoring Annual Conference (GMAC).  This past May, GMD celebrated its 40th year of these meetings in Boulder, CO.  One thing many people may not know about this year’s meeting is that it was funded entirely by private donations, which were primarily from individuals.  In the following article, Picarro’s greenhouse gas product manager, Gloria Jacobson, checks in with GMD director, Jim Butler, after the event.