There is an eye in the sky above U.S. shale oil and natural gas basins. Well, more like a nose. Through April, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration will be flying above the basins from North Dakota to Texas collecting air samples to document if drilling is adding to ground-level ozone, said Joost de Gouw , a research scientist at NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Lab in Boulder, Colorado. “We do that with a focus on air quality,” said de Gouw, also a senior scientist and fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “What are the reactive trace gases that are being released? How much methane is released from these activities?” Breathing ozone triggers a variety of health problems for children, the elderly and anyone with lung diseases such as asthma. It’s produced when sunlight mixes with nitrogen oxides and […]