A powerful eye in the sky has helped scientists from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) detect methane in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Scientists have identified more than 50 heat-trapping methane gas “super-emitters” in Central Asia, West Asia, and the southwestern United States, according to a NASA release Oct. 25, 2022.
Most of these sites have ties to the agriculture and fossil fuel industries.
“Controlling methane emissions is essential to limiting global warming,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release.
This exciting new development will help researchers better identify methane leaks and provide insight into how they can be dealt with quickly, Nelson added.
NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Sources Survey Instrument, often known as EMIT, is the instrument that helped scientists reach the conclusion.
EMIT was originally designed to examine the impact of dust on the climate.
“But it demonstrated another crucial capability: detecting the presence of methane, a potent greenhouse gas,” NASA officials said.
EMIT located a plume in the Permian Basin, New Mexico. It was about 3.3 kilometers long. The Permian, one of the largest oil fields in the world, spans parts of southern New Mexico and western Texas.
In Turkmenistan, EMIT has identified 12 oil and gas infrastructure plumes in the Caspian Sea port of Hazar. Some plumes extended over 32 kilometres.
Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It represents a small portion of man-made greenhouse gas emissions compared to carbon dioxide. But it is thought to be 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat within 20 years of release.
Methane only stays in the atmosphere for ten years, unlike CO2, which persists for hundreds or thousands of years.
This indicates that a significant decrease in methane emissions could sharply reduce projected global warming by mid-century.
Additionally, it would support the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C.
“Some of the plumes detected by EMIT are among the largest ever seen – unlike anything ever observed from space,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researcher Andrew Thorpe said in a press release.
EMIT was installed on the International Space Station in July.
Since then, he has mapped the chemical composition of dust in the Earth’s deserts. It can focus on areas as small as a football field.
“EMIT is proving to be an essential tool in our toolbox for measuring this potent greenhouse gas – and stopping it at the source,” Nelson said.
The International Space Station and the more than two dozen NASA satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes in Earth’s climate, he added.
EMIT was designed to map the surface composition of minerals in dust-producing regions of the Earth. But its ability to also detect methane is a happy coincidence. The mission study area overlaps with major global methane hotspots.
Nearly 30% of the current global temperature increase can be attributed to methane.
As it continues to study the planet, EMIT will observe places no one previously thought to look for greenhouse gas emitters, and it will find plumes no one expects, said lead researcher Robert Green. from EMIT to JPL.
“What we found in a short time already exceeds our expectations,” added Thrope.
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