NOAA's "ARC" collects greenhouse gas emissions data across city, state
BALTIMORE – A 2009 Chevy Suburban outfitted with air intake instruments is regularly spotted driving on South Baltimore streets and highways.
Scientist Phil Stratton drives "NOAA's ARC" while fellow researcher Dr. Xinrong Ren sits in the back to take notes.
"NOAA's ARC" stands for National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Air Resources Car. It measures air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Methane and carbon dioxide are the two big greenhouse gases we'll measure," Stratton said. "We try to collect one data point every second…We're just trying to get as much data as we can."
"NOAA's ARC" tries to collect data "two or three times a week," Stratton says. It has logged 20,000+ miles and hundreds of hours of data.
The scientists focus on Curtis Bay, a South Baltimore neighborhood selected for its industrial pollution, coal terminal, waste facilities, and truck traffic.
"The data is going to be great for teasing out what's coming from where," Stratton said. "If we get a better understanding of the emissions, the point sources, and the dynamics of how they're interacting and evolving over time, we can improve our pollution models."
The two also collect methane emission data near landfills, like nearby Quarantine Road Landfill across Curtis Creek.
"Instead of the (visible) plume you can see from the steam, it's the non-visible—to us—but, our instrumentation can see it," Stratton points out while driving on Fort Smallwood Road.
While Stratton discusses methane emissions, Dr. Ren takes notes of spikes in the data. Methane is a major greenhouse gas, more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It stays in the atmosphere for 12 years before decomposing.
"So, if we're able to reduce our methane emissions, it's going to have an almost immediate impact on global climate change," Stratton says.
Dr. Ren and Stratton were busy over the summer tracking worsening air quality from Canadian wildfires.
Although the two deal with climate change data daily, Ren says he "also feels hope" because data collected by "NOAA's ARC" and the team's airplane go to policy-makers to affect change.
They say they hope to keep "NOAA's ARC" on the road for years to come, with hopes of adding more instruments and collecting more data.
"We're still looking at snapshots and as we deploy the ARC longer, we'll build that snapshot into a more complete picture and more complete story," Stratton said.