NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes about its unexpected success in detecting the sources of methane leaks with a new imaging satellite. Notably its data is mot limited to just the United...
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes about its unexpected success in detecting the sources of methane leaks with a new imaging satellite. Notably its data is mot limited to just the United States: the satellite enables researchers to track emissions in comparatively remote and under-studied areas like rural Uzbekistan.
By knowing where methane emissions are coming from, operators of landfills, agriculture sites, oil and gas facilities, and other methane producers have an opportunity to address them. Tracking human-caused emissions of methane is key to limiting climate change because it offers a comparatively low-cost, rapid approach to reducing greenhouse gases. Methane lingers in the atmosphere for about a decade, but during this span, it’s up to 80 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, which remains for centuries.
EMIT has proven effective at spotting emission sources both big (tens of thousands of pounds of methane per hour) and surprisingly small (down to the hundreds of pounds of methane per hour). This is important because it permits identification of a greater number of “super-emitters” – sources that produce disproportionate shares of total emissions.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes about its unexpected success in detecting the sources of methane leaks with a new imaging satellite. Notably its data is mot limited to just the United States: the satellite enables researchers to track emissions in comparatively remote and under-studied areas like rural Uzbekistan.
You can check out the satellite’s data yourself at VISIONS: the Emit Open Data Portal.