Talk about methane and what comes to mind for many is cow farts — but it’s no joke. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and tracking where it is coming from is important.
The European Space Agency has been launching a series of satellites under the Copernicus Programme. It’s a de facto Space Patrol monitoring the homeworld.
Copernicus is the European Union's Earth observation programme coordinated and managed by the European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), the EU Member States and EU Agencies.[1] The Copernicus programme was established by the Regulation (EU) No 377/2014[2] in 2014, building on the previous EU's Earth monitoring initiative GMES (est. by Regulation (EU) No 911/2010[3]).
It aims at achieving a global, continuous, autonomous, high quality, wide range Earth observation capacity. Providing accurate, timely and easily accessible information to, among other things, improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change, and ensure civil security.[4]
The objective is to use vast amount of global data from satellites and from ground-based, airborne and seaborne measurement systems to produce timely and quality information, services and knowledge, and to provide autonomous and independent access to information in the domains of environment and security on a global level in order to help service providers, public authorities and other international organizations improve the quality of life for the citizens of Europe. In other words, it pulls together all the information obtained by the Copernicus environmental satellites, air and ground stations and sensors to provide a comprehensive picture of the "health" of Earth.
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The satellite of particular interest is Sentinel 5 Precursor, and the instrument aboard it making headlines is Tropomi;
The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) is the satellite instrument on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. The Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) is the first of the atmospheric composition Sentinels, launched on 13 October 2017, planned for a mission of seven years.
From the NY Times:
The first satellite designed to continuously monitor the planet for methane leaks made a startling discovery last year: A little known gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.
The findings by a Dutch-American team of scientists, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark a step forward in using space technology to detect leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, from oil and gas sites worldwide.
The scientists said the new findings reinforced the view that methane releases like these, which are difficult to predict, could be far more widespread than previously thought.
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Why this is important:
Natural gas is being promoted as a clean fuel — when compared to coal. It has Iower CO2 emissions and electric generating plants burning natural gas are cheaper to build and operate. It’s why coal power plants are shutting down. BUT… from the Times:
When burned for electricity, natural gas is cleaner than coal, producing about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane escapes into the atmosphere before being burned, it can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
The satellite’s measurements showed that, in Ohio in the 20 days it took for Exxon to plug the well, about 120 metric tons of methane an hour were released. That amounted to twice the rate of the largest known methane leak in the United States, from an oil and gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, Calif., in 2015, though that event lasted longer and had higher emissions overall.
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When contacted about the leak at the well, Exxon had this to say:
An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said that the company’s own scientists had scrutinized images and taken pressure readings from the well to arrive at a smaller estimate of the emissions from the blowout. Exxon is in touch with the satellite researchers, Mr. Norton said, and has “agreed to sit down and talk further to understand the discrepancy and see if there’s anything that we can learn.”
“This was an anomaly,” he said. “This is not something that happens on any regular basis. And we do our very best to prevent this from ever happening.”
The problem with that statement is there is good reason to doubt he has any way of knowing how often it happens — and the industry is in no hurry to find out.
Meanwhile on the ground:
Methane leaks are something that the fossil fuel industry is not doing a good job of policing, and under the Trump regime, industry regulation is being rolled back. The NY Times sent out a team to look for methane leaks using special equipment that can make the invisible visible.
In the air, Times reporters surveyed an area in and around two counties in the heart of the Permian with the help of specialists in methane detection.
“This site’s definitely leaking,” said Paolo Wilczak, a scientist and the pilot of the two-seater aircraft, as a laptop monitor hooked up to the equipment registered a blip in methane levels. “And that one, too.”
The reporters drove to the sites armed with infrared video gear that revealed methane billowing from tanks, seeping from pipes and wafting from bright flares that are designed to burn off the gas, but sometimes fail to do so completely. At one site, a worker walked directly into a methane plume unprotected.
Tim Doty, a former senior official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who is trained in infrared leak detection, examined and helped analyze the findings. “That’s a crazy amount of emissions,” he said. “It takes a little bit of investigative work, but with an infrared camera, you can see it.”
The images taken with the special camera are pretty dramatic. What looks to the naked eye like an empty scene, through the imaging camera is a very different picture. The article has dramatic video.
Arctic Releases Are Picking Up
The release of methane by the fossil fuel industry is troubling enough. As the planet warms, releases from thawing permafrost are also raising alarm bells.
New NASA-funded research has discovered that Arctic permafrost’s expected gradual thawing and the associated release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere may actually be sped up by instances of a relatively little known process called abrupt thawing. Abrupt thawing takes place under a certain type of Arctic lake, known as a thermokarst lake that forms as permafrost thaws.
The impact on the climate may mean an influx of permafrost-derived methane into the atmosphere in the mid-21st century, which is not currently accounted for in climate projections.
The Arctic landscape stores one of the largest natural reservoirs of organic carbon in the world in its frozen soils. But once thawed, soil microbes in the permafrost can turn that carbon into the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which then enter into the atmosphere and contribute to climate warming.
Add nitrous oxide to the mix of greenhouse gases being released from the permafrost. We’re still getting a handle on how bad it is.
Since the Arctic is warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the planet, the permafrost is predicted to thaw at an ever-increasing rate. These warm temperatures could also bring more vegetation to the region. Since plants eat nitrogen, they could help decrease future nitrous oxide levels. But, to understand how plants might mitigate the risk, researchers need more data on the risk itself.
In his place, Wilkerson hopes researchers hurry up and collect this data, whether by plane, tower, chamber, or core. Or better yet, all four. "This needs to be taken more seriously than it is right now," he says.
The permafrost may be stuck in a perpetual climate change cycle: As the planet warms, permafrost melts, warming the planet, melting the frost, and on and on. To figure out how to slow the cycle, we first need to know just how bad the situation is.
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Which brings us back to the Space Patrol.
There are limitations to hunting for methane leaks with satellite technology. Satellites cannot see beneath clouds. Scientists must also do complex calculations to account for the background methane that already exists in the earth’s atmosphere.
Still, satellites will increasingly be able to both rapidly detect large releases and shed light on the rise in methane levels in the atmosphere, which has been particularly pronounced since 2007 for reasons that still aren’t fully understood. Fracking natural-gas production, which accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, has been studied as one possible cause.
The global warming created by human activity is triggering even more warming as natural mechanisms kick in releasing even more greenhouse gases. This is a positive feedback cycle that shows no signs of slowing down. Put this all together and there’s an obvious conclusion. We have to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
UPDATE: ICYMI, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has laid out what he thinks is the only way we’re going to get anywhere: a massive investment in R&D because no one will do anything that calls for any sacrifice on their part. It’s hard to argue he’s wrong.