How satellites may hold the key to the methane crisis

A new generation of detectors will be many times better at tracking discharges of the dangerous greenhouse gasLast month, scientists working with data fromTropomi, a monitoring instrument onboard the European Space Agency ’sSentinel-5 satellite,published some startling findings. Writing in the journalScience, the team reported that it had found about 1,800 instances of huge releases of methane (more than 25 tonnes an hour) into the atmosphere in 2019 and 2020. Two-thirds of these were from oil and gas facilities, with the leaks concentrated over the largest oil and gas basins across the world, as well as major transmission pipelines, the team said.Launched in 2017, Tropomi has been a huge step forward for scientists researching methane, being the first instrument in space that can see plumes of methane emissions directly, says Lena H öglund-Isaksson, a methane researcher at theInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. For example, the instrument led to the discovery ofhuge methane leaks in Turkmenistan that researchers were not aware of before, she says.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Climate crisis Satellites Environment Science Space Cop26 Source Type: news