Countries with high sources of emissions included Iran, the United States, and Turkmenistan
"The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth's climate," Nelson added."EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potentEMIT is an imaging spectrometer designed to identify the chemical fingerprints of a variety of minerals on Earth's surface. The ability to spot methane as well is a sort of happy accident.
"It turns out that methane also has a spectral signature in the same wavelength range, and that's what has allowed us to be sensitive to methane," EMIT principal investigator Robert Green, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Green and other EMIT team members gave some examples of the instrument's sensitivity during the Tuesday media call. For example, the instrument detected a plume of methane — also known as natural gas — at least 3 miles long in the sky above an Iranian landfill. This newfound super-emitter is pumping about 18,700 pounds of methane into the air every hour, the researchers said.
That's a lot, but it pales in comparison to a cluster of 12 super-emitters EMIT spotted in Turkmenistan, all of them associated with oil and gas infrastructure. Some of those plumes are up to 20 miles long, and, together, they're adding about 111,000 pounds of methane toThat's comparable to the peak rates of the Aliso Canyon leak, one of the largest methane releases in U.S. history.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Forty countries to unveil methane plans at UN climate summit, U.S. official saysSome forty of the 119 countries that pledged last year to slash emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane will unveil their plans to do so at the UN climate summit next week, according to a senior U.S. official.
Read more »
New platinum, palladium catalyst able to deal with methane emissions for goodResearchers have discovered a palladium and platinum catalyst that is able to eliminate methane emissions from transport and other human activities to reduce global warming.
Read more »
From poop to power: Cow farm converts methane to sustainable energy for electric vehiclesA growing number of livestock farms are installing digesters to trap methane gas and turn it into sustainable energy.
Read more »
Explainer: Why methane emissions are threatening climate stabilityMethane emissions have emerged as a top threat to the global climate, with scientists and policymakers calling for aggressive action to curb the output.
Read more »
Equipment that's designed to cut methane emission is failingMethane is the main ingredient in natural gas, and it packs about 80 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide
Read more »