The Executive’s Daily Green Briefing

April 13, 2008

New CO2 Maps Offer Unprecedented Detail

new-co2-maps-5748.jpg

A new map offers more than 100 times the detail of previous inventories of carbon dioxide. The map, from Vulcan, a research project led by Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor at Purdue, shows where CO2 is being emitted in the continental U.S. in 10-kilometer grids and combines data from sources including factories, automobiles on highways and power plants.

In the image above, the amount of red represents the increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from previous estimates, and the blue represents a reduction in atmospheric CO2. Purdue assistant professor Kevin Gurney says the difference appears greatest in winter months when there are more emissions and less vertical air movement.

The increased detail and accuracy of Vulcan will help lawmakers create policies to reduce CO2 emissions while also increasing scientists’ understanding of the sources and fate of carbon dioxide, researchers say.

Before now the only thing policy-makers could do was take a big blunt tool and bang the U.S. economy with it,” Gurney says. “Now we have more quantifiable information about what is happening in neighborhoods, on roads and in industrial areas, and track the CO2 by the hour. This offers policy-makers something akin to a scalpel instead.”

A preliminary analysis of the Vulcan data suggests that previous maps of U.S. fossil fuel emissions were inadequate for current scientific and policy-making needs, Gurney says.

The three-year project, which was funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy under the North American Carbon Program, involved researchers from Purdue University, Colorado State University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Vulcan is expected to complement NASA’s planned December 2008 launch of the Orbital Carbon Observatory satellite, which will measure the concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Vulcan data is available for anyone to download from the Web site. Smaller summary data sets that offer a slice of the data and are easier to download also are available for non-scientists on the Vulcan Web site. These can be broken down into emission categories, such as industrial, residential, transportation, power producers, by fuel type, and are available by state, county, or cells as small as six miles (10 kilometers) across.

A video of the maps and simulations of the atmospheric fate of fossil fuel CO2 can be viewed below.

Join the Discussion

Comments

Beautiful videos! This really puts a tangible face on domestic CO2 emission, and as assumed, the Northeast and Texas are the biggest guilty parties. Though it should be said, that aside from Montana, no one is off the hook. :)

Today's News

Using Green IT To Get Out Of The Red And Into The Black

Using Green IT To Get Out Of The Red And Into The Black

Today's combination of dwindling natural resources, economic uncertainty, and the growing threat of global warming underscores the urgent need to embrace "being ... continue »

Measuring, Managing, Saving: Making Energy Efficiency Visible
Lean And Clean With Green Purchasing
‘Recyclable’ Is So Last-Century
Successfully Enticing LOHAS Consumers to Grocery Stores
Belief In Global Warming Slips

Belief In Global Warming Slips

The proportion of Americans who say that the earth is getting warmer has decreased since January 2007, mostly because of a decline ...

click to view full size chart »

U.S. Lags Behind On Green Consumption And Behavior
Green Marketing Campaigns Not Sticking
eCommerce Goes Green
Sony, Mohawk Bring Greener Products To Market

Sony, Mohawk Bring Greener Products To Market

Big companies are pushing research to bring greener products to market, according to this CNN video....

click to view video »

Tour Of Citigroup’s Green Skyscraper
China’s Plastic Bag Crackdown Is Windfall For Cloth Bag-Makers
Customer CSR Expectations Top Of Mind For CEOs
The Bottom Line

Marketing

Green Meetings Don’t Have To Cost More Green

Green Marketing Campaigns Not Sticking

Adam Werbach’s Answer To Consumerism’s Global Warming Blues

Emissions

With $100M, Duke Energy Joins Rooftop Solar Movement

McCain Calls For Mandatory Limit On Emissions

Kohl’s Installing Solar Power On 50 More Stores

Hi-Tech

Using Green IT To Get Out Of The Red And Into The Black

Cutting The Internet’s Carbon Footprint

Report: Data Center Energy Efficiency Needs To Double By 2012

Efficiency

Companies Respond To Climate Change Shareholder Resolutions

Virtual Hotel Aims To Improve Industry Sustainability

Popularity Of Energy Efficiency Utilities Grows

Manufacturing

Ford Racks Up Another Environmental First

China’s Plastic Bag Crackdown Is Windfall For Cloth Bag-Makers

IBM, GSK, Herman Miller See Healthy ROI From Green Purchasing

Carbon Offsets/RECs

Enel Buys $232 Million Of Carbon Credits From China’s Wuhan Steel

RGGI Cap And Trade To Go Online Sept. 10

NAM, ACCF: Lieberman-Warner Bill Will Cost U.S. Big

CSR Reports

Brazilian, Indian Companies Dominate GRI Reporting Awards

CSR: Chevron To Invest $2.5B in Alternative, Renewable Energy Tech

Colgate-Palmolive Improves Production Efficiency

Major Players

Sony, Mohawk Bring Greener Products To Market

Tour Of Citigroup’s Green Skyscraper

Food Services Industry Hammered On Climate Performance

See All Topics »