In addition, existing satellite or urban tower networks can measure CO2 in more economically developed cities. It’s less expensive and lets us measure in new locations that weren’t previously possible.” “Grass already got the CO2 out of the air and did a lot of the work for us. “People traditionally measure radiocarbon in the air by collecting large, 2-liter flasks of air, which you then have to take to a lab and extract. The researchers have found that using wild grasses offers several advantages over other techniques. However, the city’s 19th Avenue, where traffic was redirected, showed a big increase in fossil fuel CO2 based on radiocarbon content in the grass.Ĭloseup of wild grass sample used to understand the distribution of fossil fuel emissions in California. Since the city’s Great Highway remained closed to cars until the end of 2021, it retained its low emissions levels into 2021. “Other likely factors include the number of low-emission or electric vehicles in an area, and distance from industrial warehouses, with heavy big-rig traffic.”ĭrilling down further, the study detailed emissions levels on specific roadways in San Francisco. “We believe many of the differences we saw can be attributed to how many people are able to continue working remotely,” Hopkins said. Both the Los Angeles metro area and Pasadena had bigger pollution rebounds than the coast, or than the state as a whole. The team’s grass samples revealed that coastal Orange County retained their pandemic-related reduction in emissions, and that San Francisco has fared better than Los Angeles. “Plants absorb CO2 during photosynthesis and incorporate it into their tissues, recording a snapshot of local fossil fuel inputs in the process,” said study lead Cindy Yañez, formerly of UCR, now an Earth System Sciences doctoral student at UC Irvine. Graduate student Cindy Yañez taking inventory of plant samples mailed in by community scientists for radiocarbon dating.
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