| Out Of The Frying Pan... |
| Sunday, 02 October 2005 | |
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Will Flynn investigates global pollution on holiday in the Azores When asked if I would like to spend three weeks on a field trip in the Azores, I didn’t have any hesitation in saying, “Yes please!”
The ITOP campaign involved groups from several UK universities, including the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds, Leicester and York. Our team was based in Horta on the Atlantic island of Faial, the second largest of the nine islands that make up the Azores. Faial is one of the most beautiful places I have been fortunate enough to visit, with a varied mixture of lush green landscape and hills, volcanic craters, dramatic coastlines and, of course, the bright blue sea. Most of our experiments were carried out via a suite of instruments on a BAe-146 aircraft. I was involved in operating the on-board Tuneable Diode Laser Absorption Spectrometer, which measures the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. Flights, usually lasting between five and seven hours, took place over the Azores, Portugal and beyond. Even on the days we did not fly, there was work to be done: either in the hot and stuffy temporary labs that had been set up at the airport, or on the aircraft itself. The results of the ITOP study will contribute to furthering our understanding of the environmental impact of both local and global pollution. Despite the long hours, hard work, gruelling heat, constant sweating and all the itching from mosquito and other insect bites,we did enjoy one or two free days when we were able to go hiking and whale-watching.All in all it was a great experience and definitely one I would go through again! http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/itop Will Flynn is a PhD student at the Centre for Atmospheric Science, Department of Chemistry |
This trip was part of an international project known as the International Transport of Ozone and its Precursors (ITOP) which has been set up to investigate the transport of pollutants such as nitric oxide and carbon monoxide from North America to Europe. These pollutants come from forest fires and the burning of biomass and fossil fuels. Though pollution is often seen as a local problem, gases produced in this way can be transported vast distances by weather systems: pollutants originating in North America can be deposited in Europe three to five days later. In the presence of sunlight, these chemically active gases react with other chemical compounds to produce ozone, which contributes to the high concentration of ozone observed over many parts of Europe. | Next > |
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