Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

August 2, 2019 10:00 am

Private Space Race Targets Greenhouse Gas Emitters

Several startups and nonprofit organizations are using methane-tracking microsatellites to help companies understand the emissions levels of their business operations, and hold the worst polluters accountable. The satellites focus on tracking methane as it has 80 times the warming power of CO2, and is blamed for more than a quarter of the earth's 0.8 degree Celsius temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution. Scientific American reports: Historically, if scientists wanted detailed readings of emissions, ground-based sensors placed close to a source were the only option. Yet these are limited to particular sites unless teams of scientists drive around conducting time-consuming surveys, which are impractical on a large scale and are only deployed to measure known emitters. Satellites, however, survey large swaths of the planet. Their use of a single sensor also provides more consistency, making measurements from different spots directly comparable. Until recently, though, satellites have been prohibitively expensive and their spectroscopic sensors have lacked the precision of those closer to the ground. That dynamic started to change within the past decade, as broader industry demands drove the miniaturization of electronics and shrank the costs of rocket launches. This made it possible to develop smaller, cheaper satellites that carry sensors capable of zooming in on individual sites to capture high-resolution methane measurements. Companies and one environmental group have leaped at harnessing such satellite capabilities for industries and policymakers eager to pinpoint individual local methane sources. But governments and large aerospace companies, encumbered by lengthy planning processes, have been slower to pivot away from a focus on measuring methane emissions on a regional and global scale. In 2016 the Montreal-based company GHGSat was the first to get off the ground with a proof-of-concept satellite called Claire, which successfully detected methane emissions from specific sites. A handful of other groups have followed suit. The nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund has enlisted several companies to develop what it calls MethaneSAT, which could provide weekly coverage of up to 80 percent of the world's major oil and gas production sites once it launches in 2021. Its data would be made freely available to policymakers who want reliable, independent emissions measurements. And its wide global coverage means it can complement higher-resolution satellites, such as future ones planned by GHGSat that would focus on particular areas.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot