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Greenhouse gas levels spike to historic levels in Salt Lake Valley

Posted at 6:11 PM, Dec 11, 2017
and last updated 2017-12-12 00:20:07-05

SALT LAKE CITY - In a lab on the eighth floor of the William Browning Building at the University of Utah, a small group of climate scientists has gathered one of the best archives of greenhouse gas data for any one region in the world.

It's called the Utah Atmospheric Trace Gas and Air Quality Lab, (UATAQ) and it operates a collection of data gathering sites around Northern Utah measuring CO2 and Methane.

The Senior Lab Specialist, Ryan Bares, told Fox 13 about the correlation they've noticed between particulate pollution directly harmful to human health, and greenhouse gas pollution that contributes to climate change.

"We see very strong relationships between CO2, methane and pollutants, so if you see elevated CO2 concentrations on our website, you can almost be guaranteed to have elevated other pollutants.

"We're studying the difference between all of these things," said Bares.

In the above story, you'll see how much CO2 levels have spiked this week.