News Brief
May 25, 2017 
RICHLAND, Wash. - Emissions of isoprene, a compound from plant matter that wields great influence in the atmosphere, are up to 3 times higher in the Amazon rainforest than scientists have thought, according to new findings published this week in Nature Communications.
The findings come from a team of scientists from the D.O.E.'s Pacific Northwest National Lab and the University of California, Irvine. Corresponding authors are Dasa Gu of both UCI and PNNL along with Alex Guenther of UCI.
The authors also found that as the elevation of the terrain in the Amazon got higher, isoprene emissions got higher too. The phenomenon has several possible explanations, say the authors. It could be due to a variance in tree species, for instance, or it could indicate that trees at higher elevations, with less water, exhibit more stress and release more isoprene.
The findings were made as part of the Green Ocean Amazon (GoAmazon) campaign, a research endeavor of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility, a national scientific user facility funded through the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. The study included data from towers set in the forest canopy, from instrumented land sites, and from ARM's Gulfstream-159 (G-1) research aircraft.
More information about the study is in this article from ARM.
Tags: Environment, Fundamental Science, Climate Science, Atmospheric Science, Aerosols, Meteorology
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an yearly budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
