UC Berkeley installing carbon dioxide sensors for global warming research

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Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley are installing sensors in Oakland to track carbon dioxide pollution. 

Chemists from the University of California Berkeley plan to put 40 sensors over 27 square miles of Oakland and other bits of the East Bay to measure carbon dioxide pollution, which contributes to global warming.

Most of the sensors will be on top of local schools, and students will be involved in the project, Cal said.

Ron Cohen, a chemistry professor at UC Berkeley, said an existing set of about a dozen monitoring stations "gives you an average that may not be representative of what's happening where you live."

State carbon taxes rely on reports by local agencies and companies that guess at their emissions. Those assumptions may be wrong, according to Virginia Teige, a graduate student who designed the sensors.

Teige said no one is measuring carbon dioxide levels finely enough to confirm whether these reports are correct. She said the current situation is like letting drivers say whether they're abiding by the speed limit.

The shoebox sized sensors will measure carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone in the air, as well as temperature, pressure and humidity.

Read more in the San Francisco Business Journal.