The first balloon-borne sample analysis of atmospheric carbonaceous components reveals new insights into formation processes.

Atmospheric aerosol optical, physical, and chemical properties play a fundamental role in the Earth's climate system. A better understanding of the processes involved in their formation, evolution, and interaction with radiation and the water cycle is critical. We report the analysis of atmospheric molecules/particles collected with a new sampling system that flew under regular weather balloons for the first time.

Regional US carbon sinks from three-dimensional atmospheric CO2 sampling.

Studies diverge substantially on the actual magnitude of the North American carbon budget. This is due to the lack of appropriate data and also stems from the difficulty to properly model all the details of the flux distribution and transport inside the region of interest. To sidestep these difficulties, we use here a simple budgeting approach to estimate land-atmosphere fluxes across North America by balancing the inflow and outflow of CO(2) from the troposphere.