World’s first smog treasure hunt to unveil new secrets

Mufflers puffing out fumes on their way to work every day, smoke stacks from coal power plants belching out heat and chemicals, the smoke from semis billowing upward as they carrying their precious cargo up and down our roadways – where do all of the fumes go? Into the atmosphere, but where in the atmosphere?

It’s the question scientists working on a new atmospheric survey project are trying to answer. In order to combat global warming intelligently they need to understand where carbon and other greenhouse gases are entering and exiting the atmosphere. That’s where the supercharged Gulfstream jet enters the scene.

Scientists have outfitted a Gulfstream jet to capture and measure atmospheric composition and they’re flying it through various slices of the sky over the next couple of years. The data it gathers will be used to fine tune future predictions on how greenhouse gases will impact our climate in the future.

When all the measurements are assembled, scientists added, they will for the first time have a picture of the atmosphere—and a global snapshot showing where and when some of the estimated 30 billion tons of carbon emitted annually by cars, factories, deforestation and other human activities enters the atmosphere, according to Scientific American.

Right now we know that about half the greenhouse gases released by humans stay in the atmosphere, but there’s very little understanding of how those gases combine in the atmosphere and how they move through the system. This project will provide clarity for researchers as they dive into the equipment readings.

But, there’s another facet of the project that’s more important for governments, businesses and individuals trying to reverse the global warming trend. It will enable scientists outline a more specific window of time that’s available for us to repair the damage to our existing climate patterns.

That could be a major catalyst in the process bringing people together worldwide toward a common goal of living sustainably. Considering some scientists still argue that global warming is a figment of our imagination, the more concrete data the better and measuring swaths of atmosphere directly is pretty hard to argue with.