Airborne methane plumes that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions can be identified using instruments mounted on the International Space Station to study Earth’s atmospheric dust.
In order to analyse mineral dust in Earth’s atmosphere, NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source InvesTigation (EMIT… seriously?) mission was deployed on the International Space Station (ISS) in July. The equipment can also detect methane emissions, which American space scientists discovered. Since then, they have been able to locate 50 “super emitters” worldwide, which are typically businesses that produce garbage, burn fossil fuels, or operate in the agricultural or waste management industries.
At a news conference this week, Robert Green, the lead investigator of EMIT at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained that it turns out methane also has a spectral signature in the same wavelength range as the sensor.
NASA maps 50 Earth methane “super-emitters” using data from the space station’s dust sensor.
According to NASA, methane is a potent greenhouse gas with the capacity to trap up to 80 times the heat of the similarly potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. However, methane evaporates in the atmosphere in roughly ten years, whereas carbon dioxide may remain there for tens to hundreds of years. Therefore, reducing methane emissions now could significantly aid in reducing near-term climate change.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson stated that controlling methane emissions is essential to preventing global warming. EMIT is demonstrating to be a crucial tool in our toolbox to measure this powerful greenhouse gas and stop it at the source.
The molecular composition of the atmosphere is ascertained by EMIT using an imaging spectrometer, which tracks changes in light reflections. Other NASA projects have utilised similar technology, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which includes a spectrograph powerful enough to pick up carbon dioxide on an exoplanet.
When pointed at Earth, a spectrograph like EMIT can examine dust plumes, which NASA has claimed have the power to cool or warm the planet. EMIT is concentrating on identifying the arid regions of Earth that are rich in clay dust or iron dust, which have a propensity to trap or reject heat, respectively. NASA wants to find out more about how dust affects climate change using this information.
However, reports that indicate we are far from achieving our emissions reduction goals and that emissions are significantly growing make greenhouse gases a bit more of a pressing worry.
The EMIT methane project is being led by NASA research technician Andrew Thorpe, who claims that the methane plumes it has found are some of the largest ever seen. What we’ve discovered so quickly already surpasses our expectations, said Thorpe.
Examples of the huge clouds that NASA has found include 12 methane plumes in Turkmenistan that reach a distance of more than 20 miles (32km). Another plume, three miles (4.8 km) long, is released from a waste-processing facility in the south of Tehran, Iran.
A two-mile (3.2km) plume at the fringe of the Permian Basin oil field has been seen in the US, close to Carlsbad, New Mexico. The three locations collectively release about 77 metric tonnes of methane every hour. According to the International Energy Agency, methane emissions from the energy industry alone total over 135 million tonnes per year.
The US Methane Emissions Reduction Action Plan, which would provide funds to cap old wells along with assistance to minimise pipe leaks, reduce emissions from beef and dairy cows, improve emissions monitoring, and repurpose old fossil fuel infrastructure for new use, was announced by the Biden administration in January.
According to the US government, the action plan’s goal of reducing worldwide methane emissions by 30% by 2030 will not be sufficient to fulfil the reduction requirements of most recent emissions predictions.
Nelson stated that the organisation wishes to assist in reducing methane emissions at their sources, but NASA made no mention of any of the organisations that may be to blame for the enormous plumes, even in New Mexico, where the US government has the authority to intervene.
