News | Research

INSTAAR research is featured in thousands of news stories and more than 10,000 social media posts per year. Outlets include the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and as well as more regional news outlets like High Country News, 9News, and the Denver Post. Selected highlights are listed below. Additional stories are noted .

Chad Wolak prepares NOAA air samples for carbon-14 measurement.

Tracking fossil fuel emissions with carbon-14

June 1, 2020

Researchers from NOAA and the University of Colorado have devised a breakthrough method for estimating national emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels using ambient air samples and a well-known isotope of carbon scientists have relied on for decades to date archaeological sites. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report the first-ever national scale estimate of fossil-fuel derived carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions obtained by observing CO2 and its naturally occurring radioisotope, carbon-14, from air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

Colorful satellite image of the Lena River delta flowing into the Arctic ocean

Accounting for the missing silica in the marine sediment cycle (AGU Eos)

Jan. 17, 2018

Shaily Rahman led a study using cosmogenic silicon to estimate the amount of biogenic silica stored in clays along continental margins. The team's findings may explain a longstanding, large discrepancy in the global marine silica budget. Understanding silicon is especially important because of its influence on primary production and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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