MRI: Development of a New Instrument to Observe Isotopic Fluxes of Methane and Carbon Dioxide from Arctic Melt Regions, to Link Carbon Fluxes, Climate Feedbacks and Sea Level Rise

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案资助的（公法111-5）。该项目的主要目标是建造新一代可现场部署的仪器，能够同时建立同位素区分（碳12和碳13）当这些系统随着温度的升高而融化时，从北方半球高纬度永久冻土区的碳库中排放的二氧化碳和甲烷通量。温度升高。确定北极碳库中这些碳同位素的通量是一组至关重要的观测数据，这对于预测热量流入这些系统所产生的气候强迫的速率和不可逆性是必要的。将利用一种新仪器，以必要的精确度和可追踪的准确度真实的观测这些同位素通量，该仪器结合了多个技术前沿的最新进展，包括：集成腔输出光谱（ICOS），在50厘米的单元中实现2至4公里的路径长度，基于现场可编程门阵列的控制电子设备，先进的中红外电光技术，这个仪器开发项目将反映哈佛气候研究的高度跨学科性质，直接联系地球和行星科学系、化学和化学生物学系以及工程和应用科学学院的教师、博士后科学家、研究生和本科生，并将与哈佛大学环境中心合作。新的观测将涉及与研究现场数据与区域模型融合的同事进行高度合作的活动，与研究中高纬度水库二氧化碳和甲烷释放的地球化学的同事一起研究古记录，与参与开发气候预测计算机建模策略的同事一起，以及哈佛和全国其他大学的本科生和研究生。从概念到完成的学生参与是至关重要的，不仅对拟议的碳同位素仪器的成功建设和部署，而且对美国更广泛的科学未来，这将更加依赖于其培训和哲学的科学家。由于碳通量问题的规模，该仪器的设计将免费提供给更广泛的气候研究界。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The primary objective of this project is to construct a new generation of field-deployable instrumentation capable of establishing simultaneously the isotopically differentiated (carbon-12 and carbon-13) fluxes of carbon dioxide and methane emitted from the carbon reservoirs of the high latitude permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere as these systems melt with the advance of increased temperatures. The determination of the fluxes of these carbon isotopes from Arctic carbon reservoirs is a critically important set of observations that is needed for the prediction of both the rate and irreversibility of the climate forcing resulting from the flow of heat into these systems. Observing these isotopic fluxes with the requisite precision and traceable accuracy in real time will be achieved with a new instrument that combines recent advances on multiple technological fronts including: Integrated Cavity Output Spectroscopy (ICOS) to achieve path lengths of 2 to 4 kilometers in a 50 centimeter cell, field-programmable gate-array based control electronics, advanced mid-infrared electro-optic technology, and high-level software fitting routines for data analysis.This instrumentation development project will reflect the highly interdisciplinary nature of climate research at Harvard that directly links faculty, postdoctoral scientists, graduate and undergraduate students across the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and will engage the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The new observations will involve highly collaborative activities with colleagues studying the fusion of in situ data with regional models, with colleagues studying the biogeochemistry of carbon dioxide and methane release from reservoirs at mid and high latitudes, with colleagues studying the paleorecord, with colleagues involved in developing computer modeling strategies for climate forecasting, and with the large community of undergraduates and graduate students at Harvard and at other universities across the country. Student-level engagement from concept to completion is crucial, not only to the successful construction and deployment of the proposed carbon isotope instrument, but to the broader scientific future of the United States, which will come to rely even more on scientists whose training and philosophy is centered on the physical sciences in the service of key societal objectives. Because of the scale of the carbon flux problem, the design of the instrument will be made freely available to the broader climate research community.