Eyes in sky capture CO2 and other climate culprits
KATOWICE, Poland, Dec 12, (Agencies): A growing fleet of satellites is monitoring man-made greenhouse gas emissions from space, spurred by the need to track down major sources of climate changing gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
While scientists and policy-makers agree that getting a firm grasp on the origins of emissions is key to tackling global warming, there is great political sensitivity surrounding the issue.
In 2009, president Barack Obama suggested during the UN climate talks in Copenhagen that the United States might use satellites to monitor other countries’ emissions.
Obama’s call for sharing such information “so that people can see who’s serious and who’s not” annoyed China and other countries worried about outside monitoring of their emission figures.
Experts say precise country-specific emissions accounting from space remains a long way off.
But as negotiators at this month’s climate summit in Katowice, Poland, puzzle over how to ensure countries provide accurate emissions data, a host of international agencies and private companies are once again touting space-based monitoring as an aid, if not a replacement, to self-reported figures.
So-called emissions inventories are key to implementing the 2015 Paris climate accord, but until now there’s been no international standard for them, let alone independent oversight.
Each country reports data, often years-old estimates, which are used to determine whether they’re doing enough to cut emissions. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions of the most abundant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, would need to be reduced to a level the planet can absorb – known as net zero – by 2050 to keep global warming at 1.5ºC (2.7ºF), as envisaged in the Paris agreement.
Space-based observations allow scientists to capture the big picture, Tarasova said.
But, she added, “It’s like a Russian doll. You start from the global observation, then you go down to regional observation and to local observation.”
Half a world away, Mike Gunson and his colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have been operating NASA’s OCO-2 satellite since its launch in 2014. This “eye in the sky” is designed to observe carbon dioxide.
Warming thaws permafrost:
A warming climate is thawing permafrost and up to 70 percent of infrastructure in the Arctic region is at risk, including key oil and gas fields, a new study said Wednesday.
Researchers used detailed information on infrastructure across the Northern Hemisphere permafrost zone to model with unprecedented detail just how many buildings, roads, railways and other construction could be at risk by 2050.
“The magnitude of the threat was in a way surprising,” said lead author Jan Hjort, a professor of physical geography at Finland’s University of Oulu.
“Especially that around 70 percent of current infrastructure in the permafrost domain is in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost,” he told AFP.
“By 2050, 3.6 million people... may be affected by damage to infrastructure affected by permafrost thaw,” adds the study, published in the Nature Communications journal.
It also warns that nearly half the key oil and natural gas fields in the Russian Arctic are in areas with “high hazard potential” because of thawing by 2050.
And even if global leaders can keep to the promises made in the Paris climate accord, the study says the infrastructure risks up to 2050 will be the same.