Articles | Volume 19, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-3481-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-3481-2019
Research article
 | 
20 Mar 2019
Research article |  | 20 Mar 2019

Abundances, emissions, and loss processes of the long-lived and potent greenhouse gas octafluorooxolane (octafluorotetrahydrofuran, c-C4F8O) in the atmosphere

Martin K. Vollmer, François Bernard, Blagoj Mitrevski, L. Paul Steele, Cathy M. Trudinger, Stefan Reimann, Ray L. Langenfelds, Paul B. Krummel, Paul J. Fraser, David M. Etheridge, Mark A. J. Curran, and James B. Burkholder

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Short summary
We have discovered a new compound in the atmosphere, octafluorooxolane (c-C4F8O), from measurements in archived air samples. From our laboratory studies, we find that c-C4F8O is a very powerful greenhouse gas thereby contributing to global warming, and that it has a very long atmospheric lifetime of more than 3500 years. Based on our measurements we could reconstruct its atmospheric evolution over more than 4 decades. Based on this, we could estimate the global emissions of c-C4F8O.
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