Abstract
IN a recent communication, Bishop and Taylor1 express the opinion that the tritium concentration of free hydrogen in the atmosphere has been rising over the past ten years, with a doubling time of approximately 18 months. The authors suspect that artificial tritium was released into the atmosphere several years before the Castle test series in 1954, which is commonly assumed to have led to the first pronounced rise in the tritium concentration of terrestrial surface water. Bishop and Taylor's communication includes a diagram of the logarithms of all the experimentally determined tritium values in free atmospheric hydrogen plotted against time. The plot shows that the values follow a straight line that includes the first value obtained by Faltings and Harteck2 on atmospheric hydrogen collected in 1948.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bishop, K. F., and Taylor, B. T., Nature, 185, 26 (1960).
Faltings, V., and Harteck, P., Z. Naturforsch., 5, a, 438 (1950).
Harteck, P., and Suess, H. E., Naturwiss., 86, 218 (1949).
Begemann, F., and Friedman, I., Z. Naturforsch., 14, a, 1024 (1959).
Bishop, K. F., Delafield, H. J., Eggleton, A. E. G., Peabody, C. O., and Taylor, B. T., Paper No. TTS/79, I.A.E.A. Symp. on Detection and Use of Tritium in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vienna (1961).
Craig, H., Geochim. et Cosmochim. Acta, 12, 133 (1957).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
BAINBRIDGE, A., SUESS, H. & FRIEDMAN, I. Isotopic Composition of Atmospheric Hydrogen and Methane. Nature 192, 648–649 (1961). https://doi.org/10.1038/192648a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/192648a0
This article is cited by
-
Der atmosph�rische Kreislauf von Methan
Naturwissenschaften (1979)
-
Sources and sinks of atmospheric methane
Pure and Applied Geophysics PAGEOPH (1978)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.