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Retired Teacher in Mongolia Plays Key Role in Worldwide Air Sampling Network

By Carol Knight

Mrs. Bamuu Dorjnorov wore a traditional Mongolian dress to accept an award from NOAA for her volunteer efforts providing air samples. She travels more than 12 hours by train nearly every month to bring in her flask samples to the Mongolian Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, also honored.

At a remote outpost in the Gobi Desert, more than 12 hours by train from the Mongolian capitol, Bamuu Dorjnorov fills two glass flasks with air every week. After she has collected several weeks’ worth of air samples, Mrs. Dorjnorov makes the long train trip to Ulaan Baatar and takes the flasks to her country's meteorological agency, which turns them over to the U.S. Embassy for shipping to NOAA's atmospheric monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Mrs. Dorjnorov is part of a worldwide air-sampling network helping the NOAA lab collect reliable data on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Her collection site is far removed from populated areas and industrial activity, but that is purely by design. To monitor carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other trace gases in the atmosphere, researchers at the lab want samples that represent large volumes of air, not local sources of pollution. They want to analyze air that has crossed expanses of oceans or miles of desert, so they can get a true indication of the global mix of greenhouse gases.

Mrs. Dorjnorov’s site at Ulaan Uul is perfect, and she’s the perfect volunteer in this remote part of the world. She has been carefully taking these samples since being recruited and trained in 1991, providing useful data about changes in the make-up of the atmosphere over time. Her consistency and continuity are hallmarks of the NOAA carbon program, allowing NOAA’s Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL) to provide reliable data on gases in the atmosphere that could cause our climate to warm significantly in the future.

For her careful, consistent work in the air sampling program, Mrs. Dorjnorov received an award recently from the Deputy Director of CMDL, Russ Schnell. Dr. Schnell and another researcher traveled to Mongolia late in March to set up a second data collecting opportunity in Mongolia. The latest addition to the air-sampling network, using NOAA instruments mounted on a Mongolian airplane, has already begun providing data for the global network. Mongolian pilots are flying an old Russian-made Antonovv aircraft to an altitude of about 12-14,000 feet and back down every two weeks, with the instruments automatically collecting air samples.

In 1991, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NOAA and several other agencies sent representatives to Mongolia to foster scientific collaborations with the Mongolians. CMDL’s Ed Dlugokencky recalled that trip and explained that the Mongolians had already selected a site near Mrs. Dorjnorov’s hometown of Ulaan Uul near the Chinese border as a likely air-sampling spot.

Dlugokencky also remembered the remoteness of the location -- and how difficult it was to get there. From the capitol of Ulaan Baatar, (see map) he set out with a delegation including a representative of the national meteorology institute and an intern from the U.S. Embassy. They left the capitol about noon, and didn’t arrive at Sainshand in southeast Mongolia until midnight.

At Sainshand, still a bumpy car ride along unpaved desert tracks to Ulaan Uul, the group had a “lost in translation” experience when they encountered a Buddhist monk who wished to talk to them. He spoke for some five minutes in Mongolian, Dlugokencky recalled, which was translated into about one minute of Russian by the met institute representative, and then into a single sentence in English by the embassy intern.

(L) Russ Schnell, left, and Aaron Watson of NOAA’s Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Lab, on the inaugural flight using NOAA instruments to capture a 14,000-foot vertical profile of the atmosphere near the Mongolian capitol. The data complement surface air samples taken by Mrs. Dorjnorov hundreds of miles to the south near Ulaan Uul. (R) Graph depicts data provided by the worldwide network showing global concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, with yearly ups and downs indicating changes caused by seasonal transpiration of plants. The data provided by Mrs. Dorjnorov at Ulaan Uul data are shown in the red and in the inset. (larger image)

Mrs. Dorjnorov was a school teacher at Ulaan Uul when she first began collecting air samples more than 12 years ago. She made the equivalent of about $25 a month. Now, at age 50, she is retired, which she was able to do by virtue of having five children. (The Mongolian government compensates prolific parents by allowing them to collect a pension at an earlier age.)

Fortunately, Mrs. Dorjnorov is not retired from collecting air samples for NOAA and has promised to continue this work, for the sake of science and Mongolian-American cooperation, as long as possible. And researchers at NOAA’s monitoring lab who analyze the samples are grateful for her dedication and dependability, and were gratified to meet and reward her after all this time.

[4/19/04]

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