We were excited to see that Picarro customer Earth Networks has won an award as one of the 10 Big Idea winners for the Earth2Tech/Gigaom Green:Net conference this April. The award went to Earth Networks in a large part because of their ambitious plan to build the world's largest and first privately funded greenhouse gas measurement network. It will comprise 100 Picarro analyzers installed over the next two years with 50 in the U.S., 25 in the EU and 25 in other parts of the world measuring carbon dioxide and methane, the two primary GHGs.

This network will give a good baseline reading of GHGs. In the future, networks using our newer Four Species analyzers that can also measure carbon monoxide (CO) will give a better differentiation not only of background GHGs but also the actual sources (fossil fuel, natural process) because researchers use CO as a trace gas that neatly tracks combustion.

In this project, Earth Networks is teaming up with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the world's leaders in atmospheric science and other related disciplines. The first few analyzers are already live on this network and more should light up very soon as the network builds out. You can see a live feed of GHG measurements for the Southern California area here (warning - you need to install Microsoft Silverlight to view the data feed). Congrats to the Earth Networks team!