This project provides support for a planning visit to the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow and Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The U.S. principal and co-principal investigators are Leonid Yurganov and William McMillan from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The Russian counterparts are Dr. Evgeny Grechko in Moscow and Dr. Vyacheslav Zakharov in Ekaterinburg.
Through this planning activity, the US participants aim to establish a long-term collaborative research partnership with their Russian colleagues. Together they will study the influence of Siberia and Western Russia on the concentrations of climatically important gases (primarily, CO and CH4, and eventually, CO2) in the atmosphere.
The majority of the scientific community agrees that current climate change is most likely connected with human activity. However, the increase of greenhouse gases and surface temperature can trigger emissions of additional carbonaceous gases that amplify the initial changes. This concept of a self-supporting climate change triggered by human activity is currently a controversial idea in the atmospheric sciences. One of the most important geographic regions in this respect is boreal Siberia due to its huge reserve of carbon on and below the surface.
This collaboration is complementary in nature in that it brings together US and Russian expertise at important field sites to address a timely scientific topic.
