The flask sampler: automatically sampling greenhouse gases

The Amazon rainforest has an enormous turnover of greenhouse gases. The only way to find out how this turnover will develop over time is to measure it regularly. Therefore, my colleagues and I, recently installed a flask sampler set-up to automatically collect air samples to establish a time series of greenhouse gas measurements at ATTO. My name is Markus Eritt, I am a laboratory head at the ICOS Central Analytical Laboratory in Jena, which is located at the MPI-BGC.

HIGH-Tech: Gas Samples Purification System for radiocarbon in atmospheric CO2

My name is Ingrid Chanca and I am a physicist. I am currently pursuing my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, in Jena, Germany and the Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. For my research, I am particularly interested in radiocarbon. To be able to measure radiocarbon in air samples, I have built the GASPS, a Gas Samples’ Purification System.

Making sense of Teflon spaghetti: The Comparative Reactivity instrument

My name is Eva Pfannerstill, and I studied OH reactivity in different environments, including the Amazon rainforest. When I first opened the lid of the Comparative Reactivity instrument, I felt like looking at a bowl of Teflon spaghetti: The dozens of thin tubes, valves and mass flow controllers inside make up a confusing network for gas flows and reactions. Its purpose is the measurement of the so-called total OH reactivity. The OH reactivity tells us how much hydroxyl (OH) radicals are lost per unit of time in ambient air.