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Close Quarters

August 25, 2013

Rob Naugler from the US-AMS Corporation installs an accelerator column, part of the Tandetron system at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility at WHOI. Since its installation in 1989, the Tandetron has been used to analyze more than 100,000 samples from all over the world, mostly of marine origin, for the content of radiocarbon (¹⁴C). Hundreds of researchers from WHOI and elsewhere have used the results for carbon dating or isotope tracer studies in fields such as ocean circulation and the carbon cycle, and how they are affected by climate change.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)