However, the first one - accurately measuring the elevation - ought to be pretty simple. The second one - converting an elevation to a mean atmospheric pressure during the exposure duration of the sample - is actually a fairly complicated problem and is the subject of another post, as well as a fairly large number of papers. Note that there are two places to potentially screw up here. Once we know the elevation, we can convert it to a mean atmospheric pressure using a model for how the atmospheric pressure varies with elevation, and then compute the production rate. Thus, to compute the cosmogenic-nuclide production rate at a sample site, the first thing we need to know is the elevation. Basically, the main thing that controls cosmogenic-nuclide production rates is site elevation, or, more precisely, atmospheric pressure - at higher elevation, there is less atmosphere between you and the extraterrestrial cosmic-ray flux, so the production rate is higher. This post is about elevation measurements for exposure-dating samples, and how accurate they need to be.
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