Now, analyses of air samples taken at two coastal clean-air stations in California and Tasmania, Australia, have for the first time confirmed that a significantly higher percentage of overall NF3 production escapes to the atmosphere.

The team, led by Ray Weiss of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, used a combined gas-chromatography and mass-spectrometry system to measure NF3 levels in their samples.

They found that over the past three decades, the atmospheric concentration of the gas has increased more than 20-fold, from 0.02 to 0.454 parts per trillion, with most emissions occurring in the Northern Hemisphere.

The overall amount of the gas in the atmosphere, estimated in 2006 at less than 1,200 tonnes, was then actually 4,200 tonnes and has since risen to 5,400 tonnes.

Given its strong global-warming potential and estimated atmospheric lifetime of 740 years, this is equivalent to the effect of about 67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide - roughly the total annual CO2 emissions of Finland.

It is now shown to be an important greenhouse gas, said Prather. Now we need to get hard numbers on how much is flowing through the system, from production to disposal, he added.

Source-ANI
TAN