Air Sampling for Atmospheric O2 Measurements at the South Pole

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This four-year atmospheric chemistry project will extend a global air sampling program to include a sampling site at South Pole Station. Samples will be analyzed for the oxygen/nitrogen ratio and for carbon dioxide content. The work will be done cooperatively by the climatic baseline station operated by NOAA in conjunction with the National Science Foundation. Recent advances in instrumentation have made it possible to detect variations in atmospheric oxygen content at the parts-per-million level. Such high precision atmospheric oxygen measurements are important in the context of climate and global change since they are not only important in their own right, but are basic to such issues of global warming as the carbon dioxide budget, ozone, and marine productivity. Data from South Pole Station are necessary to constrain the estimates of carbon dioxide fluxes due to marine productivity in the southern hemisphere, and to confirm indications that the oxygen concentration in the southern hemisphere is generally higher than that in the northern hemisphere.