Measurements from the Tanager-1 satellite with a NASA instrument detected large plumes of methane and carbon dioxide in countries and regions around the world, monitoring who is polluting, how much and where, with highly reliable precision.
And, most interestingly, the data will be open to the public, a transparent way to find out who is polluting and pcontinue reducing emissions responsible for climate change.
This is work led by NGO carbon mapper who published the first detections of methane and carbon dioxide provided by the Tanager-1 satellite using data from an imaging spectrometer designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (LPC)as reported by the space agency in a press release.
Open data
And what’s important about this work on satellites and its open data is that it opens the door to knowing what’s going on.Which countries and which oil, gas or other operations emit these gases?what the European Union will start monitoring to import fossil fuels.
Concretely, the first measurements detected columns of methane in Pakistan and Texasas well as another carbon dioxide in South Africa. As NASA reported, tAll of this data contributes to the organization’s goal of identifying and measuring greenhouse gas emissions. from point sources on a global scale and make this information accessible and actionable.
By area, the space agency explained that the data used to generate the image of Pakistan They were collected over the city of Karachi (in the far south of the country) on September 19.
3 km methane column
The photo itself shows a plume of methane about four kilometers long emanating from a landfill. According to Carbon Mapper’s preliminary estimate, the emission rate from the source is greater than 1,200 kilos of methane released per hour.
On the same day, the image was taken over Kendal (about 120 kilometers from Johannesburg, South Africa). This reflects a column of carbon dioxide almost three kilometers long of a coal-fired power plant. According to the NGO’s preliminary estimate, the emission rate from the source is approximately 600,000 kilos of carbon dioxide per hour.
In the USA too
Finally, the last image was obtained on September 24 at Midland (west Texas, USA) and shows a methane plume south of the city.
Located in the Permian Basin, Midland constitutes one of the largest oil fields in the world. Again, as Carbon Mapper’s preliminary estimate highlights, The source’s emission rate is nearly 400 kilos of methane per hour.
Tanager-1, equipped with Carbon Mapper technology and built by Planet Labs PBC, was launched from Vandenberg Space Station in California (United States) on August 16 and collected data to verify that your spectrometer works correctly. Planet Labs PBC and NASA LPC are both members of the Coalition of Carbon Mappersfinanced by philanthropic funds.
300,000 km² per day
Each chemical compound present in the soil and atmosphere reflects and absorbs different combinations of wavelengths, giving it a “spectral fingerprint» that researchers can identify.
Thanks to the NASA satellite spectrometer, hundreds of wavelengths of light can be measured reflected by the Earth’s surface. Using this method, Tanager-1 will help researchers detect and measure emissions down to the facility level.
Once fully operational, the spacecraft will explore approximately 300,000 square kilometers of the Earth’s surface per day.
As NASA noted, methane and carbon dioxide measurements collected by Tanager-1 will be available publicly on the data portal Carbon mapper.
