This proposal seeks five years of continuing funding for the MIT component of the multinational, global atmospheric measurement program entitled advanced global atmospheric gases experiment (agage).…

This federal contract award is for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue funding for the MIT component of the multinational Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) program. AGAGE is a global atmospheric measurement program that aims to track emissions and concentrations of key greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, and other compounds. The contract, valued at $6,025,983, is awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and has no set-aside designation. The AGAGE program is recognized for its importance in studying ozone depletion, climate change, and the impacts of international environmental agreements. The contract will fund MIT's continued participation and contributions to this collaborative global research effort over a 5-year period through January 2023.

This proposal seeks five years of continuing funding for the MIT component of the multinational, global atmospheric measurement program entitled advanced global atmospheric gases experiment (agage). Separate proposals from ucsd-SIO seek funding for the SIO component. The case for real-time, high-frequency measurement networks is very strong and the observations and their interpretation are recognized widely for their importance to ozone depletion and climate change studies and to verification issues arising from the montreal (ozone) and kyoto and successor (climate) protocols. Agage is distinguished by its capability to measure globally, at high frequency, all the important species in the montreal protocol and all the important non-CO2 gases in the kyoto protocol. The scientific objectives of agage are important in furthering understanding of global chemical and climatic phenomena. They are: 1) determine optimally from observations the global rates of emission and/or destruction (i.e., lifetime) of anthropogenic chlorocarbons, chlorofluorocarbons (cfcs), bromocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (hcfcs), hydrofluorocarbons (hfcs) and perfluorinated compounds (pfcs, NF3 and SF6) that contribute most of the reactive halogen to the stratosphere and/or are strong infrared absorbers. (2) document accurately the global distributions and temporal behaviors of biogenic/anthropogenic gases important in climate change and/or ozone depletion: methane, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methyl chloride and methyl bromide. (3) identify greenhouse and ozone-depleting gases (e.g., SO2F2, NF3, C4F10, C5F12, C6F14, C7F16 and C8F18 have been identified), initiate real-time monitoring of these gases, and reconstruct their past histories from agage and air-archive measurements. (4) determine optimally the average concentrations and trends of tropospheric hydroxyl radicals from the rates of destruction of atmospheric methyl chloroform, hfcs and hcfcs, and estimates of their emissions. (5) determine optimally, from atmospheric observations and estimates of their destruction rates, the magnitudes and distributions by region of surface sources/sinks of these gases. (6) provide accurate data on the global accumulation of these trace gases, which are used to test the synoptic/regional/global-scale circulations predicted by three-dimensional models. (7) provide global and regional measurements of methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and estimates of hydroxyl levels, to test primary atmospheric oxidation pathways at midlatitudes and the tropics.