Global alarm system watches for methane superemitters

Methane is a stealthy greenhouse gas, erupting unpredictably from sources such as pipelines and gas fields. Scientists have wanted to catch these emitters in the act. In the past, watchdogs had to monitor likely sites from the ground or by airplane. Now, massive, short-lived leaks can be detected automatically, from space, anywhere in the world—a first step toward plugging them and slowing climate change. The new technique, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan through the 12 million daily observations collected by a European satellite, could aid future efforts to spot plumes in data collected by satellites, such as the International Methane Emissions Observatory announced in 2021 by the United Nations. Although so far the technique only captures the largest blowouts, there’s no better place to begin, says Ilse Aben, an atmospheric scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and co-author of the new work. “That’s the low-hanging fruit,” she says. “If you’re putting in the effort to stop leaks of methane, better to start with the big ones.” The SRON team behind the work, which appeared late last month as a preprint in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics , has now begun posting its weekly results on its website . Last month alone, they detected 192 methane plumes—some persistent, some intermittent—with an emissions rate greater than 10 tons per hour, concentrated in ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news