Can drinking tea help us understand climate change ?
Yes. Teabags can provide vital information on the global carbon cycle. And consumers worldwide can improve climate modelling without much effort or instrumentation. Multinational tea distributors communicate with consumers at a scale not attainable by scientists. That is why we want tea consumers to become our researchers and take part in one of the largest crowdsourcing efforts to date.
We developed a simple and cheap method to measure decay rate by making use of tea consumers. The method consists of burying tea bags with green tea and rooibos, and does not require a large effort or complicated instruments. This method was developed and tested by a team of researchers from the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Institute of Ecology and the University of Iceland.