NASA satellite shows how we can track local CO2 emissions from space

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16-01-2023, 23:00

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INA – SOURCES

Using the world's fifth-largest coal-fired power plant as a test case, a team of researchers used data from OCO 2 and 3 to detect and track changes in CO2 and quantify the emissions produced below.

The research was led by Ray Nassar, a senior researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto (UofT). He was joined by researchers from ECCC, UofT, Colorado State University, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Their findings demonstrate that space-based observations can be used to track CO2 emission changes at a local scale.

Launched in 2014, the OCO-2 satellite maps natural and anthropogenic CO2 emissions on regional and continental scales. This is done indirectly by measuring the intensity of sunlight reflected off Earth's surface and directly by measuring the amount of CO2 absorbed in the column of air between the surface and the satellite.