Outdoor CO2 levels can go up to 700-800ppm in rural areas due to plants creating CO2 [1]. I was initially surprised it's that high but it was verified with reference instruments.
Why measure CO2 outdoors?
We are able to detect emission sources pretty well now with our outdoor monitors [2] that have the SenseAir S8 NDIR sensor built in. You can see some real data in the blog post I wrote about launching our global CO2 map [3].
So setting up a dense network of these sensors in a city would allow to measure if for example the introduction of low-emission zones or switching to electric buses etc. would work.
Another use case is to check for leakage in underground CO2 storage facilities.
All-in-all it's still experimental (to some extent) but we know the accuracy is there and we can see more and more use cases as outlined in my blog post. So we now work hard to get more and more of these sensors out there to get more data to identify additional use cases.
Why measure CO2 outdoors?
We are able to detect emission sources pretty well now with our outdoor monitors [2] that have the SenseAir S8 NDIR sensor built in. You can see some real data in the blog post I wrote about launching our global CO2 map [3].
So setting up a dense network of these sensors in a city would allow to measure if for example the introduction of low-emission zones or switching to electric buses etc. would work.
Another use case is to check for leakage in underground CO2 storage facilities.
All-in-all it's still experimental (to some extent) but we know the accuracy is there and we can see more and more use cases as outlined in my blog post. So we now work hard to get more and more of these sensors out there to get more data to identify additional use cases.
[1] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/performance-of-low-cost-co2...
[2] https://www.airgradient.com/outdoor/
[3] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/airgradient-global-co2-map/