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The Air Up There
11/15/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. To remedy the ozone issues from this past
summer scientists are looking at data from monitoring stations, some of which are on mountain
tops including our own Mount Washington. Why are these sites so vital? Kendall Perkins of
New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services...
KP: It's very important to monitor high level ozone because ozone gets transported in the
atmosphere at this level from out-of-state, so you can see what's happening at a regional
transport basis by monitoring upper level ozone.
In addition to the air sampling, the ability to know weather conditions also contributes to
the scientists' understanding. Chris St. Germain of the Environmental Protection
Agency...
C St. G: A lot of the sites across -- I cover the New England area and parts of Canada, but
for the most part there's always some local meteorological information available, which is
crucial, especially for the ozone transport to see where it's coming from and that helps with
the ozone forecasting.
Kendall Perkins...
KP: A lot of the air quality that affects us in New Hampshire is from out-of-state. We're
not putting ourselves on a pedestal here; obviously we do generate a little bit here in the
state, but most everything we see here in New Hampshire is from out-of-state and we're gonna
have to deal with that on a federal level. We have another section that will look at that
data and make the predictions and draw some inferences from that, but again, we need good
data. That's the bottom line and that's what we're doing.
The Weather Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory. Our website is
weathernotebook.org. Funding for our program comes from the National Science Foundation and
Subaru of America. Thanks today to Marketing Manager Melody Nester.
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