Published on 14 December 2020
While carbon dioxide is more abundant in the atmosphere, and therefore more commonly associated with global warming, methane is more potent as a heat-trapping gas. It usually enters the atmosphere mainly from landfill sites, livestock farming, rice agriculture and the fossil fuel industry – particularly during coal, oil and gas extraction and transportation.
Until recently, no straightforward solution has existed to detect individual methane emissions and track them back to their original sources. The Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, launched in 2017, is the first Copernicus mission dedicated to monitoring the atmosphere and is the first satellite to provide regular imagery of Earth for emission detection. However, the spatial resolution of its measurements limited the ability to correctly attribute methane emissions to their sources.
Methane hotspot detected with Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery
Now, scientists from Kayrros, a European technology start-up, have succeeded in developing a tool that can accurately detect individual methane emissions. By combining data from the Sentinel-5P satellite with measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 infrared spectral range channels, scientists can now easily detect, quantify and attribute methane emissions to their sources.