[Agage-sc] [EXTERNAL] Re: July Meeting

[Weiss, Ray]

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of NASA.  Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.  Use the "Report Message" button to report suspicious messages to the NASA SOC.



Hi Reem and the AGAGE SC,

I think Anita’s proposed agenda item is just the tip of a larger iceberg, and that it should be expanded.  Please see my forwarded message to Bo and others regarding a new manuscript on Chinese CCl4 that is copied below, plus the recent Chen et al. CFC-11 paper that is cited in that message.  This, of course, raises some much larger questions about being an AGAGE publication.  Should AGAGE papers be reviewed separately by the project?  Should they be AGAGE papers if their data are not up to AGAGE measurement or calibration standards?  These are very important questions that will be difficult to address, but I think we must address them.

Best,  Ray

From: agage-sc <agage-sc-bounces at espo.nasa.gov> on behalf of "Hannun, Reem A. (ARC-SGG) via agage-sc" <agage-sc at espo.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: "Hannun, Reem A. (ARC-SGG)" <reem.a.hannun at nasa.gov>
Date: Tuesday, July 2, 2024 at 11:27
To: AGAGE SC <agage-sc at espo.nasa.gov>
Subject: [Agage-sc] July Meeting

Hi All,

Our July meeting is coming up next week on 10 July 15:00 GMT. Please send me agenda items by next Monday, and let me know if you would like to volunteer as convener.

So far, I have:

  1.  What is an AGAGE publication? (Website publication tracker) – Anita, 20 min.

Take care,
Reem

---
Reem A. Hannun
NASA Ames Research Center
Atmospheric Science Branch
Mail Stop 245-5
Moffett Field, CA 94035
(650) 864-3274
reem.a.hannun at nasa.gov<mailto:reem.a.hannun at nasa.gov>


From: Ray Weiss rfweiss at ucsd.edu<mailto:rfweiss at ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, July 4, 2024 at 12:11
To: Bo Yao yaobo at fudan.edu.cn<mailto:yaobo at fudan.edu.cn>, mindean at mit.edu<mailto:mindean at mit.edu> mindean at mit.edu<mailto:mindean at mit.edu>, jianxin at pku.edu.cn<mailto:jianxin at pku.edu.cn> jianxin at pku.edu.cn<mailto:jianxin at pku.edu.cn>
Cc: Ron Prinn rprinn at mit.edu<mailto:rprinn at mit.edu>, Jens Mühle jmuhle at ucsd.edu<mailto:jmuhle at ucsd.edu>, Chris Harth charth at ucsd.edu<mailto:charth at ucsd.edu>, Luke Western luke.western at bristol.ac.uk<mailto:luke.western at bristol.ac.uk>, Matt Rigby Matt.Rigby at bristol.ac.uk<mailto:Matt.Rigby at bristol.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Co-author invitation for Chinese CCl4 emission paper

Hello Bo, Minde, and Jianxin,

Thank you for the invitation of co-authorship on this paper.  I apologize for my slow reply – I have been going through some medical issues that have kept me from giving this my full attention.  Jens is looking into some important points, and I am writing now to urge you to take whatever time it takes to get this right.  If this cannot be sorted out before the Nature Geoscience editor wants the revised paper back, you must ask for more time.  It is also critical that you engage with Chris Harth, who is the top expert in sorting our calibration issues within AGAGE.

These calibration concerns are just a small part of a much larger issue involving data integrity between AGAGE and the rapidly growing number of atmospheric ODS observations being made in China.  As certainly Bo and Jianxin know, we in AGAGE have been arguing for years that open data access and open discussion lie at the heart of maintaining AGAGE data quality.  Had the CMA not been so inward looking, SDZ would still be part of the AGAGE network.  We now face some of the same issues in sorting out the calibration issues for this new CCl4 paper.  Working through these mysteries is further complicated by not following the standard AGAGE procedure of using “out” and “in” calibration values to find and quantify drift in AGAGE tertiary standards.  CCl4 is particularly prone to drift in cylinders, especially as the pressures become lower and the air inside becomes drier.  It is important that we get this right


As you know, there is a separate paper recently published by Yuyang Chen et al. on the first CFC-11 data from the new Xichong station in southeastern China (https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1088%2F1748-9326%2Fad5857&data=05%7C02%7Cagage-sc%40espo.nasa.gov%7C769aef4c16a344f2178c08dc9c5f32c4%7C7005d45845be48ae8140d43da96dd17b%7C0%7C0%7C638557179887671169%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vxXRZLbs6LEgr3pf%2Fd1gr4gmD7OPfr22uKVXXDI7Jjo%3D&reserved=0).  This paper even has AGAGE in its title, but there is no discussion of how the AGAGE standards were propagated to those observations, and certainly no discussion of the uncertainties associated with that propagation process.  Furthermore, it is clear that, separate from the calibration questions, the precision of the CFC-11 ODS5-Pro measurements it reports (1% 1-sigma) is 5 to ten times worse that the precision of the CFC-11 measurements reported by a typical AGAGE station with a Medusa GC-MS instrument (0.1% to 0.2% 1-sigma).  This is a critical issue that must be resolved if the ODS5-Pro measurements are to be integrated into the AGAGE network.  If this is in fact due to the poor performance of the Chinese GC-MS used in the ODS5-Pro, as I have understood, this resolution may involve talking with Huanaco and Agilent about overcoming the obstacles that have prevented Huanaco from working with Agilent.



We in AGAGE have enough problems assuring that the Medusas around the world are operated and calibrated properly.  We welcome the inclusion of the new Chinese stations into the AGAGE network, but we cannot accept that this integration reduces the world-leading quality and rigor of the AGAGE measurements.  It is time to pay much more attention to doing this integration properly.  This is a much bigger issue than just doing our best to sort out the CCl4 calibrations for this one paper.


Let’s try to resolve these larger issues!

Ray



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/agage-sc/attachments/20240704/d5c83171/attachment-0001.htm>