The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) identified more than 50 methane hotspots around the world.
Using a tool developed to study how dust affects climate, NASA scientists have identified more than 50 methane-emitting hotspots around the world, a development that could help combat the potent greenhouse gas.
NASA said Tuesday that its Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) has identified more than 50 methane “superemitters” in Central Asia, the Middle East and the southwestern United States since it was installed aboard the International Space Station in July.
Newly measured methane hotspots — some already known and others just discovered — include sprawling oil and gas facilities and large landfills. Methane has so far been responsible for around 30 percent of global temperature rise.
“Curbing methane emissions is key to limiting global warming,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement, adding that the instrument will help “locate” methane super-emitters so that such emissions ” at the source” can be stopped.
Methane is much more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. Our new @NASAclimate The EMIT mission to measure atmospheric dust has mapped more than 50 methane “super emitters” around the world: https://t.co/d4OhBwIeOQ pic.twitter.com/9QLxDMN0nW
— NASA (@NASA) October 25, 2022
Orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes from its perch aboard the space station at about 400 km (250 miles) altitude, EMIT is capable of scanning vast areas of the planet, tens of kilometers across, while focusing on areas that are so are as small as a soccer field.
The instrument, dubbed an imaging spectrometer, was built primarily to determine the mineral composition of dust blown into Earth’s atmosphere from deserts and other arid regions, but it has proven capable of detecting large emissions of methane.
“Some of the [methane] The discovered EMIT plumes are among the largest ever seen – unlike anything ever observed from space,” said Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who led the methane studies.
Examples of the newly imaged methane super-emitters, unveiled Tuesday by JPL, were an accumulation of 12 plumes from Turkmenistan’s oil and gas infrastructure, some extending more than 32 km (20 miles).
Scientists estimate that the Turkmen clouds are collectively releasing methane at a rate of 50,400 kg (111,000 pounds) per hour, rivaling the peak flow of the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas field eruption near Los Angeles, considered one of the largest unintended methane releases in US history.
Two other major emitters were an oil field in New Mexico and a waste processing complex in Iran, which together emit nearly 60,000 pounds (29,000 kg) of methane per hour. The methane plume south of the Iranian capital Tehran was at least 4.8 km long.
JPL officials said neither side was previously known to scientists.
“As it continues to survey the planet, EMIT will observe places where no one has previously looked for greenhouse gas emitters, and it will find clouds that no one expects,” said Robert Green, EMIT’s principal investigator at JPL, in a statement.
Methane is a by-product of the decomposition of organic matter and is the main component of natural gas used in power plants. It accounts for a fraction of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions, but has about 80 times more heat storage capacity per pound than carbon dioxide.
Compared to CO2, which stays in the atmosphere for centuries, methane only lasts about a decade, meaning that reducing methane emissions has a more immediate impact on the planet’s warming.
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