Space mission spies on more than 50 “super-emitters” of greenhouse gases on Earth

In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 2021 saw a record increase in atmospheric methane – a harmful greenhouse gas known to contribute to global warming and with it all its devastating consequences.

Consequences such as violent hurricanes and floods that destroy people’s homes and result in horrifying death tolls. Like forest fires that devastate entire cities and increase the risk of cancer.

What is striking is that this is marked second year Such a massive surge in methane has occurred since scientists began tracking levels of the chemical in 1983. And to make matters worse, the ominous pattern arises from the fact that fossil fuel production, biomass burning, improper waste management, and others Human activities produce a lot of methane – but these activities have increased worldwide.

In other words, the way we burn coal for energy and build huge landfills to store our garbage is at the heart of the problem.

To find out exactly where our methane emissions are coming from – so we can try to plug the biggest sources – NASA repurposed an International Space Station mission to look down on Earth and identify our planet’s methane hotspots.

The effort, dubbed the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation — named for its original mission to study how dust affects our climate — but also known as EMIT, found more than 50 of what NASA has dubbed “super emitters” designated methanes. These super emitters include facilities, equipment, and other man-made infrastructure associated with the fossil fuel, waste, and agriculture industries.

“The new observations come from the broad coverage of the planet afforded by the space station’s orbit, as well as EMIT’s ability to scan swaths of the Earth’s surface tens of kilometers wide, resolving areas as small as a soccer field,” the said NASA.

Scientists from the EMIT program essentially took the mission’s spectral data, which show a bird’s-eye view of chemical fingerprints of certain molecules on Earth, and gathered clues to the signature of methane. As it turns out, methane falls within the spectral range that EMIT was calibrated for, so the trigger was quite natural.

“We were excited to see how mineral data from EMIT will improve climate modeling,” said Kate Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate advisor, in a statement. “This additional methane detection capability provides a remarkable opportunity to measure and monitor greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.”

Earth’s methane culprits

In all, EMIT data found over five dozen super-emitters in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the southwestern United States.

For example, the mission’s instruments detected a methane plume about 2 miles (3.3 kilometers) southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin. This is probably because this region is home to one of the largest oil fields in the world, stretching from this part of New Mexico to western Texas. The team estimated a staggering methane flow rate of about 40,300 pounds (18,300 kilograms) per hour at this point.

Near Tehran, Iran, a methane plume stretched for at least 3 miles of the landscape near a large landfill. This point appeared to indicate a flow rate of 111,000 pounds (50,400 kilograms) per hour.

In Turkmenistan, the agency said EMIT detected 12 separate plumes coming from oil and gas installations east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar. As the wind blew west, some of those methane plumes stretched a whopping 20 miles. That site yielded a flow rate of 18,700 pounds per hour, according to a NASA press release.

“Some of the EMIT plumes detected are among the largest ever seen – unlike anything ever observed from space,” said Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at NASA who leads the EMIT methane effort, in an explanation. “What we have found in just a short time is already exceeding our expectations.”

And that just scratches the surface of what the team has found – and what they may find in the future.

Now that it’s proven its strengths in areas known to produce lots of methane, EMIT will observe places where no one has looked before for greenhouse gas emitters and find clouds we might not expect. Hopefully it will unveil some secret culprits of global warming.

Or as NASA puts it: “With broad, repeated coverage from its vantage point on the space station, EMIT will potentially find hundreds of superemitters — some previously discovered by airborne, space-based, or ground-based measurements, and others that were unknown.” “

“Limiting methane emissions is key to limiting global warming. This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight into how to address them – fast,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

Later, the mission’s spectrometer could also look for other greenhouse gases: the fingerprint of carbon dioxide – another man-made chemical that contributes to the warming of our planet – also falls in the wavelength range of EMIT.

“These results are exceptional, and they demonstrate the value of pairing a global perspective with the resolution needed to identify methane point sources down to the facility scale,” said David Thompson, EMIT instrument scientist and NASA senior research scientist. into a statement.

“It’s a unique capability that will raise the bar for efforts to map methane sources and mitigate emissions from human activities.”