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Sampling the Sea Air
Mon Jun 30, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Last summer, NOAA's largest research vessel,
went to sea to find out why the air over New England is so bad. Today, assistant producer
Doug Sanborn discovers how scientists can do this.
On a small platform thirty feet above the bow of the Ronald H. Brown, chief scientist at the
Mount Washington Observatory, Alex Pszenny, collects air for analysis.
AP: We're doing a study of the acid/base chemistry of the marine atmosphere in the New
Hampshire seacoast region. We have glass bulbs through which air is drawn at a high rate that
generates a very fine mist of almost water vapor in the chamber, it's almost like a little
cloud that scavenges, or traps soluble gasses out of the air, puts them in the solution which
we then take out and analyze for a variety of different chemical species.
Pszenny is looking for aerosols, microscopic particles in the atmosphere.
AP: The main goal of this study is trying to get a handle on what causes the high levels of
air pollutants in the NH seacoast region and coastal New England, in particular, every summer.
We know in general that it's caused by the pollution that's generated by burning fossil fuels.
But the details of that for example, how much of it that we feel the impact here in New
Hampshire is attributable to sources in the mid-west verses sources right here in our own
local area, that's not easy to tell because the sources are all fairly similar in chemical
composition.
Pszenny said it takes a variety of measurements made at the same time and the same place to
begin to tell the sources apart. For The Weather Notebook, I'm Doug Sanborn.
The Weather Notebook is produced by The Mount Washington Observatory, and funded through
grants from Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation.
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