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Did Beijing Medal In Pollution Cuts?

Noel Hidalgo
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Flickr – Creative Commons

As the Summer Olympic Games get underway today in London, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder have been looking back to the last games. The effort to clear the skies in Beijing was also a perfect experiment for climate scientists.

The concern four years ago was that smog would sicken elite marathoners and cyclists, and tar Beijing’s coming out party. So the Chinese government told drivers they could only be on the road every other day.

NCAR scientists, including atmospheric chemist Helen Worden, wondered just how much of a dent that made to global greenhouse gas emissions.

“It was a rare opportunity to study transportation in an actual urban setting, and how much CO2 was reduced,” says Worden.

Credit Lex Ivey/UCAR
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UCAR
Satellite measurements of carbon monoxide allowed researchers to calculate carbon dioxide levels.

Worden used satellite measurements and computer models to calculate that the drop was roughly 60,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day. That’s about was a quarter of one percent of what’s needed to keep the planet from warming to dangerous levels. While that may not sound like a lot, it’s also the result of action in just one city.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” says Worden, “so we were a little surprised it was that significant.”

The result suggests that aggressive steps to limit car emissions in many more cities would play a large part in preventing climate change.

“If you’re revising a current transportation plan for a city,” says Worden, “this gives you further incentive, while you’re trying to solve the issues of congestion and air quality, that this gives you another benefit.”

The biggest worry for the Olympic hosts in London this year is also in the sky, but unlike Beijing, there’s not much the British can do about rain.

I am covering science stories at KUNC this summer as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, a program that matches scientists with news outlets so that they can try their hand at translating science to regular folks. My normal day job is as a graduate student at Yale University, doing immunology research with Dr. David Schatz. Previously, I graduated from Haverford College, majoring in English and biology.
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