By Aazam
October 27, 2022
NASA's Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) programme is mapping critical minerals in dust-producing deserts to better understand airborne dust's climate consequences
The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and equipment have long helped track climate change
EMIT is helping us quantify and eliminate this powerful greenhouse gas
Methane has a distinctive spectral fingerprint that EMIT's imaging spectrometer can detect
This unique feature will improve methane source attribution and human activity mitigation
Methane accounts for a small percentage of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, yet it traps heat 80 times better than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 20 years after release
Methane lasts roughly a decade, but carbon dioxide lasts generations, so reducing emissions will limit near-term warming
Operators of gas-emitting plants, equipment, and infrastructure can swiftly reduce emissions by knowing where significant emitters are
The mission's study area matches global methane hotspots, allowing researchers to evaluate the imaging spectrometer's methane detection capabilities
EMIT found 12 oil and gas infrastructure plumes east of Hazar, Turkmenistan. Some fumes reach 20 miles westward
A massive waste-processing complex south of Tehran, Iran, produced a 3-mile-long methane plume
The JPL-developed Carbon Plume Mapper (CPM) detects methane and carbon dioxide