by
November 8, 2016
A few years ago, a group of Canadian atmospheric scientists and their international colleagues discovered high amounts of ammonia in the summertime air above the Canadian Arctic Archipelago region. Naturally, they wanted to figure out where the ammonia was coming from.
That group published the answer and further findings in Nature Communications earlier this week. Media coverage that followed summarized it quite succinctly in headlines: bird poop.
“We identified a fascinating, albeit somewhat comical, connection between Arctic seabirds, atmospheric particles, clouds and climate,” says Betty Croft, first author of the study and research associate with Dalhousie’s Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science.
