Monitoring of air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Monitoring Krypton-85

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:466211

Novitchkov, V ^[1]

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1. Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute (Russian Federation)

Krypton-85 is an anthropogenic radioactive noble gas, a gaseous fission product which builds up in the atmosphere. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) integrates many monitoring and research activities involving the measurements of atmospheric composition. Kr-85 represents one of the gases recommended by the WMO for monitoring. The collaborative program of the Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute (MEPI) and the US Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) NOAA activities is aimed at determining the possible future consequences of Krypton-85 content (trend) increasing in the earth`s atmosphere. The research is conducted at the MEPI to study the character of KR-85 release into the atmosphere and its distribution in the atmosphere, to determine Kr-85 possible sources. If only the question of the direct impact of Kr-85 on climate would be considered, only the order of magnitude of the atmospheric concentration would be of interest. In this case almost any available detection method and a precision as low as some 10% would be acceptable. If however, Kr-85 is to be applied as a tracer for the improvement of our present knowledge of local, regional and global transport and mixing processes and the validation of global-scale transport and mixing models, a much higher precision is required (order of +1%). This high standard cannot be met without a permanent quality assurance programmer. It is within the framework of the WMO that MEPI and the Air Resources Laboratory NOAA USA proposes collaboration of Kr-85 scientific findings. The project MEPI {open_quotes}Monitoring Krypton-85{close_quotes} is being financed through the International Science and Technology Center.

• OSTI ID: 466211
• Report Number(s): CONF-9606185--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AIR POLLUTION
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING
GLOBAL ASPECTS
KRYPTON 85