Private weather network will monitor greenhouse gases.

Power plants that burn fossil fuels, like this coal-
fired plant, churn out carbon dioxide along with
electricity.A map of greenhouse gas instrument locations
across the USA to be installed by Earth Networks.

A private company announced Wednesday that
it's launching its own greenhouse gas measuring
network to supplement governmental and
academic efforts that have tracked greenhouse
emissions for decades.
Carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas deemed
most responsible for global warming — has been
continuously measured in the Earth's atmosphere
since 1958. The measurements have been
overseen by the federal government's National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) and the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
The new sensor network will be overseen in a
joint venture between Washington, D.C.-based
Earth Networks, formerly AWS Convergence
Technologies, and Scripps. Earth Networks is
parent company of the popular WeatherBug
weather network and computer application used
by consumers, schools, government agencies
and TV stations.
"We have the largest network of weather sensors
in the world," says Robert Marshall, CEO and
founder of Earth Networks. Marshall says the new
sensors will piggyback on some of the
company's existing 8,000 weather sensors.
The greenhouse gas sensors will be networked
directly into the weather sensor network, Earth
Networks says. Because the EarthNetworks
infrastructure is already deployed, the
greenhouse sensors can be deployed quickly.
Marshall says the network will be devoted to
measuring carbon dioxide, methane and other
greenhouse gases. Over the next two years, it
will consist of 100 sensors worldwide: 50 in the
USA, 25 in western Europe and 25 in the rest of
the world.
The company will invest $25 million over the next
five years to deploy and operate the network.
Earth Networks, in Germantown, Md., is working
closely with scientists from Scripps, since Scripps
deployed the first carbon dioxide sensor more
than a half century ago — in 1958, at the Mauna
Loa volcano in Hawaii. That remains the longest
continuous record of atmospheric concentrations
of carbon dioxide in the world.
The announcement was made Wednesday at
Scripps in La Jolla, Calif., where the first new
sensor was deployed. A second will be deployed
soon in Washington D.C.
According to Earth Networks, most companies
and countries base emissions calculations on the
raw materials that go into a factory or power
plant, rather than on the actual gases emitted as a
result of manufacturing or energy generation.
These measurements will help paint a far more
accurate picture of what's occurring in the
atmosphere, Earth Networks says.
The new sensors will be another possible
contributor to NOAA's greenhouse gas sensor
network, says Jim Butler, director of global
monitoring at NOAA's Earth System Research
Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "We will be looking
at their data and analyzing it," he says.
Butler says NOAA houses and maintains the
world's main laboratory for measuring carbon
dioxide and other gases, is responsible for all the
global carbon measurements, and has been
doing so for more than 40 years. They have 70
to 80 stations around the world.
"It takes a lot of attention to accuracy, precision
and continuity," says Butler. He says "if their data
isn't good, we won't use it."
Scripps scientist Ray Weiss says the new
network is not intended to replace NOAA. "We
want to further the science," he says. "This data
will be open and transparent not just to scientists
but also to consumers around the world."
Carbon dioxide alone is responsible for 63% of the
warming attributable to all greenhouse gases,
according to NOAA's Earth System Research Lab.


Source: Http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2011-01-12-greenhouse-gas-monitors_N.htm