This product has been discontinued. Please reference our replacement analyzer G2508.

This product has been discontinued. Please refer to our Discontinued Products for information on replacement analyzers.

 

This product has been discontinued. Please refer to our Discontinued Products for information on replacement analyzers.

In a landmark study from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, scientists uncovered a hidden geothermal spring beneath the Changmolung Glacier in India’s Karakoram range — the first evidence of geothermal heat driving glacier retreat in the region. Using Picarro’s L2140-i isotopic water analyzer, the team traced unique δ¹⁸O and δ²H signatures that confirmed a deep hydrothermal origin for the meltwater. Their findings reveal that subsurface heat, not climate alone, is reshaping glacier dynamics — challenging the long-standing “Karakoram Anomaly” and raising a new question: how many

In a groundbreaking study from Lund University, researchers explored the flight mechanics of migratory songbirds using a combination of wind tunnel experiments and stable isotope analysis using Picarro's G2201-i. Their goal: to understand how birds convert metabolic energy into mechanical power during flight — and whether that efficiency changes with speed.

This month's Picarro Spotlight on Research that Matters, Field Application Scientist, Russell Chedgy, PhD, selected a paper that showcases how the Picarro L2140-i water isotope analysis system is pivotal in improving our understanding of the roles of isotopes in animal physiology research.

Beyond Leak Detection: Why Network Intelligence Is the Future of Gas Operations

The natural gas industry is evolving—and fast. Traditional leak detection, while essential, is no longer enough to meet growing demands around emissions reduction, safety, and regulatory compliance.

The next step? Network Intelligence.

Why Integration Matters - Unlocking Value Through System Compatibility

In today’s utility landscape, new technologies are only as valuable as their ability to work with the tools you already use. That’s why Picarro’s emissions intelligence platform is built for integration. 

From GIS to work order systems, PSMS to capital planning tools—Picarro connects the dots. 

Built for Compatibility

The Picarro system is natively designed to integrate with:

Beyond Compliance: The Need for a Global Network Intelligence Approach

As governments and regulatory bodies worldwide tighten methane emissions standards, the energy industry faces a pivotal moment: compliance is no longer enough. With PHMSA’s forthcoming regulations in the U.S.

With recent regulatory changes and political shifts, sterilization facilities are facing increased uncertainty. One thing is clear: operators will need more efficient emissions reduction strategies and compliance best practices to maintain long-term operational stability. In this blog, Picarro experts describe what to expect and how to address regulatory compliance.

The EU Methane Regulation is now in effect, bringing stringent new requirements for measuring, monitoring, reporting, and reducing methane emissions across gas distribution networks. With deadlines fast approaching, operators must act swiftly to develop a compliant Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) program while ensuring operational efficiency.

The Fall 2024 Picarro Gas Conference, held in Amsterdam this year, brought together 56 leaders from 31 companies across Europe for three days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and future-focused presentations. The event provided a platform for natural gas operators to explore the latest advancements in methane emissions management and compliance with the new EU Methane Regulation.

At Picarro, innovation is at the heart of everything we do, and today, we’re thrilled to introduce something we believe will truly transform the way natural gas operators work—the Picarro Handheld. This new device isn’t just another tool in the toolkit; it’s the next step in revolutionizing leak detection and management, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with the world.

Why This Handheld Matters

Thinking Outside the Box

Thinking outside of the box is a critical mechanism for any innovative product; however, understanding the capabilities and foundation of why the box exists in the first place is crucial.

In the global effort to understand and combat climate change, networks across the world are monitoring greenhouse gases (GHGs). With their unique, high-precision CRDS technology, Picarro analyzers are used in many of these networks, including at all Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) Atmosphere Thematic Centre networks. With the introduction of the PI5310 Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) analyzer, Picarro provides the best solution for N2O and CO atmospheric monitoring that meets and exceeds World Meteorological Organization (WMO) compatibility goals and ICOS

Addressing methane emissions is critical in combating climate change, alongside efforts to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

PS-19 Test Results Show Picarro CRDS Far Outperforms OE-FTIR 

The US EPA recently finalized the updates to 40 CFR 63, Subpart O (otherwise known as the Commercial Sterilizer National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants/NESHAP).  The updated rule came into effect through the Risk and Technology Review (RTR) and aims to address Ethylene Oxide (EtO, EO) emissions from point sources and room air emissions. 

This article will serve as a guide to selecting a suitable vehicle for use in Picarro AMLD drive survey usage.

Welcome to an exploration of the future of pipeline safety and environmental standards. We're diving headfirst into the game-changing proposals put forward by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

Natural gas distribution system operators (DSO) around the world must detect and measure methane emissions to find and eliminate hazardous leaks, meet financial budgets and shareholder expectations, and address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. 

Mitigation can only happen once DSOs understand their emissions. It can be very challenging to account for fugitive emissions in a distribution network which may contain millions of pipe segments and other assets representing potential point emitters. 

Methods of Estimating Network-Wide Gas Leak Flow Rates - Which is Best for Your Utility?

The key to understanding and tackling the methane emissions problem is to identify, measure, quantify, and reduce the methane emissions from your business activities. Knowing the total emissions volume of your organization is a critical step toward meaningfully reducing emissions and taking credit for those reductions.

In our recent podcast on methane abatement, part of our expert series, which features the perspectives of industry leaders on the challenges and advancements in gas and energy sectors, Picarro’s Francois Rongere, Senior Director Solution Architect, Climate and Safety, and Sean MacMullin, Senior Director of Software and Data Analytics, discuss the relationship between methane detection, quantification, and abatement programs, aiming to illuminate the future of methane emission management.

In our recent podcast, we tackled the critical issue of methane data collection, leak detection and emissions measurement - uncovering the current state of the industry and its potential future directions. Our guest experts, Picarro’s Francois Rongere, Senior Director Solution Architect, Climate and Safety, and Sean MacMullin, Senior Director of Software and Data Analytics, shared their perspectives and offered unique insights into this evolving industry.

Gas operators are increasingly being challenged to reduce methane emissions, and to do so in a continuous, verifiable way. This challenge at its most extreme has some cities recently banning natural gas in new construction. Further, as the infrastructure ages, gas operators face challenges in managing budgets and unplanned work due to an accelerating rate of growth in the number of leaks emerging from leak-prone pipe. These pressures are driving the need to manage gas assets as cost-effectively as possible.

Indoor air quality is highly correlated with the health of employees in workplaces where toxic gases are present. Companies using EtO need to adopt new monitoring approaches that provide a fast response and are specific and sensitive to low concentration levels of fugitive emissions. This new blog describes how to better monitor fugitive EtO emissions in the workplace with Picarro EtO monitoring solutions.

Jonathan Bent, Ph.D., Senior Application Scientist, Environmental

Measurement Location:
ORDEQ Near-road Site
Tualatin, OR
45.3992°, -122.7458°

 

At Picarro, we love when customers share their innovative integrations and applications of our analyzers in the field. This customer success story is highlighting Assistant Professor, Dr. Yuzhong Zhang of Westlake University, China. With the help of Beijing Cen-Sun Technology Development Co., our partners in China, Dr. Zhang recently set up a G2201-i within his car to obtain on-board GHG measurements. We are grateful to Dr. Zhang and Cen-Sun’s efforts for bringing us this wonderful story. Enjoy!

Picarro is proud to support important climate science. We are a partner of the DEEPICE project, an innovative training network in instrumentation, ice core analysis, and glaciological and climatic modelling. For their new European collaboration, we’re excited to support training schools and host an intern to assist in the development of analytical methods for ice core measurements that will answer key questions about the impact of large climate shifts on the Antarctic ice sheet.

High-precision trace gas measurements are required for a range of environmental research questions and for many industrial applications. However, hazardous, corrosive, and reactive gases can be difficult to trace, and the accuracy of standard gas concentrations can be unreliable. To solve this problem, Picarro has developed a method of surrogate gas validation for ammonia, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen peroxide, hydrogen fluoride, and formaldehyde.

To investigate how plant growth will be affected in the future, ecologists and plant biologists have setup Free-Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment (FACE) facilities in various ecosystems around the world that imitate elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. A Picarro G2508 is being used at a FACE facility in Germany to investigate the response of a semi-natural grassland to changing environmental conditions.

Hydrogen peroxide has a long history as a pharmaceutical sterilizer at high concentrations, and the claim by these manufacturers is that extremely low levels of hydrogen peroxide (10-20ppb or 0.01ppm) will attract and kill viral particles while not impacting human health. Instead of just treating air as it returns, these solutions seek to keep a constant low level of hydrogen peroxide in all habitable areas of a building.

The year was 2008.  The second wave of therapeutic biological products was just around the corner.  By now it was known that many of these products were susceptible to oxidative damage by residual hydrogen peroxide left over after aeration of the aseptic processing equipment and barrier system.  How sensitive these products were to low concentrations of residual hydrogen peroxide was difficult to assess because there were no obvious measurement systems capable of quickly, accurately and precisely measuring vapor phase hydrogen peroxide below a few hundred parts per billion (

The most effective and valuable new therapeutic products today are biologics, including peptides, proteins, and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), as well as cells, cell-derived products, and gene therapies. Many of these products are susceptible to oxidative damage by trace levels of hydrogen peroxide.

Anyone who has watched a hummingbird frantically sip from a flower or feeder can appreciate how beautiful, hyperactive, and hungry these tiny birds are. It often seems that they are constantly on the move, fiendishly searching for and defending the flowers that contain the sugary nectar they depend on.

In part 1 of this blog series, we explore how iCHEAR used a Picarro G2103 analyzer to provide real-time measurements of ammonia emissions to separate the contribution of exhaled and dermally emitted pollutants. What proportion of human emissions do you think can be measured and what proportion remain “missing”? Read on.

The following study takes us through the voyage of the Polarstern ice breaker of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.

The Picarro Small Sample Introduction Module (SSIM) is designed for processing small volumes of gas samples through a Picarro analyzer. Through a minor modification, we can now expand the functionality of the SSIM so that more accurate concentration measurements can be performed on both isotopic and concentration analyzers.

This is the second post in a three-part series that examines how Picarro analyzers, systems, and accessories ensure precise, accurate measurements of challenging seawater and high-saline water samples.

This story starts more than 20 years ago when Professor Jeffrey Richey’s research group started to consider the importance of the tropics, and particularly, the Amazon basin, to the global carbon cycle. 

I just returned from a week-long trip to Dubai where I was fortunate to participate in and help lead an International Atomic Energy Agency Regional Training Course on “Separating evapotranspiration (ET) into evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) using isotopic and conventional techniques”.  The five day technical course gathered about 15 scientists from across the Middle East region to learn about the importance of understand water use efficiency in agriculture, and in particular how to use stable isotopes of water to partition water loss from crops into “good” water loss (transpiration

The future of natural gas leak detection is the subject of two recent publications.

CABAUW, NETHERLANDS — While carbon dioxide (CO2) currently contributes to two-thirds of anthropogenic radiative forcing, the effects from other greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as methane and nitrous oxide, remain largely uncharacterized and could significantly impact the future of global climate change.  In order to address uncertainties in emissions, the Integrated non-CO2 Greenhouse gas Observing System (InGOS) project is focused on improving and extending the European observation capacity for non-CO2 GHGs.

Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo of the National University of Costa Rica foresees water challenges affecting even the wettest regions of the globe, such as Central America. Applying his experience gained from the University of Idaho-Moscow, he’s intent on finding solutions by studying Costa Rica’s little understood water systems.

BOULDER, CO — According to their website, the Global Monitoring Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA/ESRL/GMD) “conducts sustained observations and research related to source and sink strengths, trends, and global distributions of atmospheric constituents that are capable of forcing change in the climate of Earth through modification of the atmospheric radiative environment, those that may cause depletion of the global ozone layer, and those that affect baseline air quality."

FRANCE / RUSSIA — With a large percentage of its area covered by forest (800×106 hectares) and huge stocks of carbon (roughly 320 gigatons), Siberia is a significant player in the global carbon budget. Yet, there are many unknowns when it comes to the region’s biogeochemistry and the distribution and emissions of compounds that play a role in tropospheric chemistry and climate change.

Few scientific meetings match the level of organization and attendee engagement as does this Global Monitoring Annual Conference (GMAC).  This past May, GMD celebrated its 40th year of these meetings in Boulder, CO.  One thing many people may not know about this year’s meeting is that it was funded entirely by private donations, which were primarily from individuals.  In the following article, Picarro’s greenhouse gas product manager, Gloria Jacobson, checks in with GMD director, Jim Butler, after the event.

In January, Picarro introduced a first-of-its-kind solution for natural gas pipeline leak detection and measurement, based on our new series of methane isotope analyzers. The new solution, called the Picarro Surveyor™ for Natural Gas Leaks, measures methane plumes in the air, maps them, and then immediately alerts users and repair teams upon leak detection in real-time while traveling at normal driving speeds.

I've got two simple yet evocative phrases  for you. Wing pods. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Excited? We are. During late June, a team of top scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center deployed three Picarro analyzers as part of the The Railroad Valley Vicarious Calibration Campaign, a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. One of the analyzers was deployed in a wing pod of an Alpha jet which flew up to altitudes of 25,000 feet. Another was deployed in the nose cone of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is a product of human activities that use carbon-based fuels, such as home heating, cars, and manufacturing plants, to name a few. But CO2 also has many natural sources, such as soil, volcanoes and all living things that breathe. So a necessary question that should be asked by climate and citizen scientists alike is, “How do you know increases in CO2 are from human activity?”

We blogged previously about carbon sequestration and its a topic we watch closely. You may have read that earlier this week Saskatchewan approved plans for a commercial-scale carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project.

Das FORUM Gas Wasser Wärme hat in seiner ersten Ausgabe 2025 einen spannenden Fachartikel zur Einführung der fahrzeuggestützten Methode zur Abbildung von Methanemissionen auf dem Gasverteilnetz veröffentlicht. Der Artikel geht auf die konkreten Vorgaben der EU-Methan-Verordnung ein und erläutert im Anschluss, mit welchen Methoden und Lösungen Branchenakteure die Einhaltung der entsprechenden Vorgaben erreichen können.

The EU Methane Regulation is now in effect and contains numerous provisions for the precise measurement, quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification of methane emissions, as well as for emission reduction through LDAR (Leak Detection and Repair) activities, repair obligations, and restrictions on venting and flaring. 

With LDAR program submissions due in May 2025 and first emissions reports required by February 2026, now is the time to implement a comprehensive, data-driven compliance strategy.

We provide natural gas operators around the globe with the most effective and proven path to net zero methane emissions, and actionable data through direct methane measurements.

 

This brochure offer a quick glance into Picarro's four primary use cases and how they may impact your operations.

 

Picarro offers a comprehensive suite of analytics tools to provide visibility into your natural gas infrastructure at a degree of accuracy not possible.

The ability of the Picarro system to measure a large area quickly and quantify the relative risk of leak indications has made it popular with multiple natural gas utilities for emergency response in communities after disasters and other catastrophic events.

The Picarro PI5131-i N2O Isotopic Analyzer provides continuous, high-precision measurements of nitrous oxide (N2O) mole fractions, as well as its δ15Nα, δ15Nβ, δ15N and δ18O isotopic compositions. To meet the growing demand for discrete sample analysis, Picarro has developed the Sage gas autosampler.

Flood-irrigated agricultural soils can be a significant source of the greenhouse gases (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) (Linquist et al. 2011, Oertel et al. 2016). As these ecosystems are typically characterized by high spatial and temporal heterogeneity, continuous trace gas measurements are needed to better detect patterns and quantify net ecosystem fluxes.

This application note outlines the configuration and use of the Picarro G2201-i dual carbon (CO2 & CH4) isotope analyzer to differentiate between C3 and C4 respiration sources at a transitional agricultural experiment in southern Sweden.