greenhouse gases Archives

Measuring greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires from space

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Using carbon monoxide to measure greenhouse gas emissions from forest fires using satellites instead of traditional monitoring options

Vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere in Siberia, Canada, and Alaska are covered in forest. Fires (wildfires) in this wilderness are quite common, with the forests being at risk twice a year, first in spring and then in late summer. Occasionally these wildfires reach populated places causing damage to homes and other city buildings. Furthermore, many experts believe that carbon […]

Antilope: A low-cost portable sensor system for air quality monitoring

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Antilope is a low-cost portable sensor system for air quality monitoring

Monitoring air quality and assessing personal pollutant exposure in urban settings remain challenging tasks in atmospheric science. As part of this monitoring, low-cost sensors have become increasingly available. This allows makers to assemble their own air quality stations according to online instructions, and institutions to multiply the number of measurement points. However, most of these commercial devices suffer from limitations […]

Food Waste-to-Energy: A project-based school learning experience

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Professors Jan DeWaters and Stefan Grimberg have worked with a public school to develop a school-wide food waste recovery programme that includes classroom and extracurricular education

One of the challenges facing the uptake in renewable energy and waste-reduction methods is sufficiently changing peoples’ perceptions to ensure a cultural shift needed for momentum. A possible model for achieving this sits in the small village of Potsdam in the US state of New York. Professors Jan DeWaters and Stefan J Grimberg at Clarkson University have established an ongoing […]

Nanotechnology and metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture

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Dr Cheung has examined how nanomaterials such as ZIFs can be used in selective carbon capture as a result of their porosity

Greenhouse gases pose a major environmental threat that needs to be tackled. Nanotechnology offers great potential, with novel nanomaterials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) being strong candidates for the adsorption of greenhouse gases. Dr Ocean Cheung, assistant professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, looked into a MOF sub-category, zeolite imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and examined how mixing raw materials for ZIF […]

Adaptation to climate change and increasing CO₂ in rice

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Improving yield response in rice under increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will help this crop adapt to the changing climate. Dr Toshihiro Hasegawa, a plant physiologist at Tohoku Agricultural Research Center in Japan, studies the effects of climate change on rice yield and quality. The FACE (free-air CO2 enrichment) platform provides experimental facilities under open-field conditions for modelling how […]