China launches satellite to monitor carbon dioxide

BEIJING: China on Thursday launched a satellite to monitor carbon dioxide levels, state media said, making the Asian giant the third country to track the potent contributor to global warming from space.

The TanSat probe will allow China to keep a close eye on greenhouse gas emissions and give it a “louder voice” in future negotiations on carbon reduction, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The technology will “trace the sources of greenhouse gases and help evaluate whether countries are fulfilling their commitments” to reduce pollutants under environmental pacts, it said.

China is a signatory to the Paris climate change agreement, the first universal action plan for curbing global warming.

The US and China are together responsible for some 40 per cent of the world’s emissions, so their participation in the agreement is crucial for its success. The satellite launch comes after US president-elect Donald Trump, an avowed climate sceptic, reportedly threatened to gut the US space agency Nasa’s climate change monitoring programme. China is the third country after the US and Japan to launch a CO2 monitoring satellite. The three-year mission will take readings every 16 days. its permanent residents to 762,000 by 2020, down 115,000 compared to the 2016 target, while Xicheng district is targeting a cap of 1.1 million within five years, the newspaper said. Daxing and Shunyi, two new municipal districts, are targeting a population below 1.7 million and 1.3 million respectively. Shijingshan, a relatively small district in area, aims for 616,000 next year, almost unchanged, it said. The official Beijing News said plans to relocate residents, companies and some government departments to suburban areas or even outside the capital, together with the demolition of illegal buildings, are expected to play a major part in the scheme to cap population.

Reuters