An orbital NASA sensor that was primarily created to further research airborne dust and its effects on climate change has also proven to be highly effective at detecting significant global emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Since it was installed in July on the International Space Station, the tool, an imaging spectrometer, has found more than 50 methane “super-emitters” in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States, NASA reported on Tuesday.
Large landfills and widespread oil and gas complexes are two of the newly measured methane hotspots, some of which were previously recognized and others that were recently identified.
By measuring the wavelengths of light reflected off the surface soil in certain places, the spectrometer was initially constructed to determine the mineral composition of dust carried into the atmosphere from Earth’s deserts and other arid regions.
The Earth Surface Mineral Dust Investigation, or EMIT, by NASA, will assist researchers in determining if airborne dust in various regions of the world is likely to trap or deflect heat from the sun, so causing the planet to warm or cool.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the Los Angeles area, where the instrument was conceived and constructed, have discovered that methane absorbs infrared light in a distinct pattern that the spectrometer in EMIT can easily identify.
Numerous methane super-emitters from space are discovered by a NASA instrument.
EMIT can scan huge swaths of the earth dozens of miles across while also zooming in on places as tiny as a soccer field from its perch atop the space station, about 250 miles (420 km) high.
According to Andrew Thorpe, a JPL research technologist in charge of the methane studies, some of the (methane) plumes EMIT discovered are among the largest ever seen and unlike anything that has ever been viewed from space.
Methane, a result of decomposing organic matter and the main component of natural gas utilized in power plants, contributes just a small portion of all greenhouse gas emissions created by humans, but it has an 80 percent greater heat-trapping potential per unit of mass than carbon dioxide.
Methane survives in the atmosphere for around ten years, as opposed to hundreds of years for CO2, hence reducing methane emissions will have a quicker effect on global warming.
Among the newly photographed methane super-emitters highlighted by JPL on Tuesday was a group of 12 plumes from Turkmenistan’s oil and gas infrastructure, some of which reached distances of more than 20 miles (32 km).
Methane is believed to be released from the Turkmenistan plumes at a rate of 111,000 pounds (50,400 kg) per hour, which is comparable to the peak flow from the Aliso Canyon gas production blowout in 2015, which is one of the biggest accidental methane leaks in American history.
A waste-processing facility in Iran and an oilfield in New Mexico were two additional significant sources of emissions, each of which released almost 60,000 pounds (29,000 kg) of methane per hour. According to JPL representatives, neither was previously known to scientists.
Before the end of its year-long mission, EMIT, one of 25 Earth research instruments in orbit, may discover hundreds of methane super-emitters, according to NASA.
