New York has a greenhouse gas accounting problem. The state broadly tracks its sources of air pollution, from energy production to transportation to waste management, but the books don’t always match what’s actually in the air. The amount of methane over New York City, for example, is puzzlingly higher than expected.
It’s a mystery that Róisín Commane is trying to solve. Part accountant, part sleuth, the Columbia University atmospheric chemist scours the city from pavement to rooftop looking for unidentified or incorrectly cataloged sources of greenhouse gases — and uses this information to improve our understanding of the city’s anthropogenic emissions.
There are two primary strategies to
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