“Forever chemicals” found in the Amazon rainforest atmosphere for the first time.

Ivan Kourtchev and his colleagues discovered a so-called “forever chemical”, one particular PFAS substance, in the pristine rainforest at ATTO. Their analysis suggests that the compounds, which are banned due to their health risks, were not emitted locally, but were transported to the site over long distances.

Chasing down OH with the help speech recognition techniques

Direct measurements of OH radicals are rare and difficult to achieve. However, since they react with BVOCs, Ringsdorf et al. inferred them from isoprene measurements at ATTO. To do so, they applied a technique called ‘Dynamical Time Warping’ from the field of speech recognition. Akima Ringsdorf et al. published the study “Inferring the diurnal variability of OH radical concentrations over the Amazon from BVOC measurements” Open Access in Nature Scientific Reports.

Biological and environmental factors regulating isoprene emissions

Eliane Gomes Alves and her colleagues measured isoprene emissions at the ATTO 80-meter tower across three years to better understand how these emissions vary seasonally and under extreme climatic conditions like El Niño events. They also looked into which biological and environmental factors regulate the emission of isoprene to the atmosphere.