Using long-term monitoring records to track sulfur and nitrogen emissions

Rain and plant absorption eventually remove sulfur and nitrogen compound emissions from the atmosphere. Credit: NOAA

The Climate Program Office’s Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle and Climate (AC4) Program funded new research to find a better way to track sulfur and nitrogen compound emissions (SOx and NOx) in the United States. These pollutants are ultimately taken out of the atmosphere by rain (wet deposition) or absorbed by land and plants (dry deposition). Doctoral candidate Ishir Dutta and AC4-funded scientist Colette Heald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explored several long-running deposition datasets to see if they can help understand complex trends in SOx and NOx. They used a dataset with direct measurements of wet deposition, from a network across the country that detects precipitation with sampling bags and rain gauges.