Sandia National Labs NM Partnerships Collaboration Report 2021-2022

Releasing, detecting, and modeling trace aerosols and gases in Earth’s stratosphere

CONTRIBUTOR Spotlight

UNM Distinguished Professor Zachary Sharp, Director of the Center for Stable Isotopes, is an expert in stable isotope geochemistry. Sharp’s collaboration on this Sandia LDRD project provided an essential understanding of stratospheric processes related to mass independent fractionation.

Proposed actions to reduce ever-increasing global temperatures include geoengineering the Earth’s climate by injecting matter into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight. This proposition, known as Solar Radiation Management, is based on global climate model studies averaged in space and time and Plinian-style volcanic eruptions observations from near-single points. By increasing multi-season, multi-year spatial sampling of the lower stratosphere from high altitude balloons and combining the data with Lagrangian parcel models, they will test current knowledge of stratospheric dynamics and chemistry for its potential to maintain injected aerosols and reduce the risk of climate change, a national security threat. Sandia PI Erika Roesler teamed with UNM Distinguished Professor Zachary Sharp, Director of the Center for Stable Isotopes. As part of the LDRD project “Releasing, Detecting, and Modeling Trace Aerosols and Gases in Earth’s Stratosphere,” Roesler and Sharp and former graduate students Nathan Perdue and Jordan Wostbrock, developed a method to measure the concentration of the three isotopes of oxygen in atmospheric O 2 and CO 2 . Collaborating with Sandia, the UNM team developed a sample vessel and valve system to allow for several liters of stratospheric air to be returned to earth for isotope analysis. Published triple oxygen isotope analyses of stratospheric air are limited to only a few studies. This collaboration will assist with the understanding of stratospheric processes related to mass independent fractionation.

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