Discovery News: Environmental

Smog Blog

Wildfires have been ripping through the west, and while they endanger homes and may or may not be good for the natural habitats they burn, they are definitely bad for the air quality.

The Smog Blog tracks air quality nationwide on a daily basis with satellite data, lidar, EPA pollution-monitoring networks, and more, compiled by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Atmospheric Lidar Group. The team provides lots of maps showing clouds, smoke, particle levels, ozone levels, etc.

In recent days the emphasis has been on the wildfires in California. Plumes of smoke are easily seen from satellite images. They suggest the huge scale of the fire, but don't do justice to the havoc much closer to the ground.

Check out the maps and the air quality near you.

 

(Image: Measurements of particles < 2.5 microns shown over California. Maroon points near Auburn, Sacramento, Roseville-Rocklin and Bakersfield show hazardous levels, overlaid on true color satellite image. Image obtained from the U.S. Air Quality Smog Blog.)

Atmospheric Scientists: To Study CO2 Is to Spew It

Here’s a curious article from the Annals of Irony: “The travel-related carbon dioxide emissions of atmospheric researchers.”

Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) in Kjeller, Norway calculated the CO₂ emissions from all business travel for the institute's scientists, who study air pollution, including climate change.

More than 90 percent of the emissions came from air travel. The annual total for business travel alone came to 4.3-6 tons per scientist, compared to the global average annual total per capita CO₂ emissions of 5 tons.

"The travel-related CO₂ emissions of a NILU scientist, occurring in 24 days of a year on average, exceed the global average annual per capita emission," Stohl pointed out.

Incredibly, the Norwegian average annual total per person is 21 tons, among the highest in the world, Stohl reported, mostly because of oil industry emissions.

However, he concluded in his abstract (which was actually published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions), “If the emissions per NILU scientist derived in this paper are taken as representative for the average Norwegian researcher, travel by Norwegian scientists would nevertheless account for a substantial 0.2% of Norway's total CO₂ emissions. Since most of the travel-related emissions are due to air travel, water vapor emissions, ozone production and contrail formation further increase the relative importance of NILU's travel in terms of radiative forcing.”

As someone who works from home and sometimes gets a little stir crazy, I can see the benefits of face-to-face contact, and if these researchers' flights are going to help solve the climate problem sooner, then they're probably worth the CO₂. But video conferencing is getting more and more sophisticated—and is being used more as fuel and flight prices go up.

Should we be pushing for more telecommuting or do we need to meet in person? Let us know about your telecommuting successes and failures.

(Photo: NOAA via Wikimedia Commons)