This new satellite could help cities and communities curb methane emissions

Methane emissions have risen faster than ever before in the past five years, scientists at Stanford University announced last week.

It’s a worrying result: In the first 20 years after it’s released, methane warms the atmosphere 90 times faster than CO2. That danger has prompted 150 countries to pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 – a goal that is “as far away as a desert oasis,” according to an author of the study behind last week’s warning.

The launch of a methane-detecting satellite in August marked the beginning of an era of new opportunities for state and local governments to help flatten that curve. The satellite carries an imaging spectrometer, a device that measures the wavelengths of light reflected from the ground.

Methane absorbs wavelengths that give it a unique “fingerprint.” This fingerprint in the reflected light can be linked to a precise location on the Earth’s surface. With this information, those responsible for emitters such as oil and gas facilities can go straight to the source and take the necessary action, whether that’s stopping a leak in a gas pipeline or repairing a methane capture system at a landfill.

The launch was a long-awaited advancement for Carbon Mapper, a public-private partnership that includes the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Planet Labs PBC and RMI. For nearly a decade, Carbon Mapper has been preparing for this moment, validating its technology and approach by deploying spectrometers on high-altitude aircraft.

Targeted flights over oil and gas infrastructure and waste disposal sites have identified methane plumes that, in some cases, became entrenched within days of being observed. Tanager-1, which takes its name from a species of colorful songbird, is the first satellite in a planned constellation that could eventually scan the entire surface of the planet, detecting sources of high emissions on an almost daily basis.

“We are excited to see the satellite launch,” said Dan Cusworth, project scientist at Carbon Mapper. “It is now executing the plan and demonstrating how the satellite can be put to good use.”

Share satellite data

The plan is to make data from Tanager-1 (and future satellites) available to government officials and the public through a freely accessible data portal. This one satellite cannot cover the entire planet, so Carbon Mapper will start with reports from high-interest areas such as the Permian Basin oil and gas facilities.

Initial tests of the satellite instrument have already begun, says Cusworth. This includes the ability to communicate with the instrument and upload software. The images from Tanager-1 will be compared with validated images from aircraft to determine if adjustments are needed. This will continue until the fall, with data release beginning in 2025.

The data portal is already online, drawing on past data from sensors on the Carbon Mapper aircraft and more recent NASA satellite scans. Cusworth points out that the NASA instrument was not designed for methane detection and is not as sensitive as Tanager-1. Those instruments can also detect CO2 plumes, and users also have time-stamped observations of them available that can be searched by location. Cusworth expects to receive new data from Tanager-1 about every 90 days. It will take another 30 days to translate that raw data into something that can be presented on the portal.

As more satellites join the constellation, updates will be faster and the area they will cover will be larger. In addition to what appears on the portal, data seekers can already pay Planet Labs to have the satellite collect images from a specific area and receive data within a few days. This could be a researcher, an industrial company or a government agency that is providing funding to reduce methane emissions and wants to get a better picture of where problems exist.

take responsibility

Local governments are responsible for the third-largest source of methane emissions: the decomposition of organic waste in landfills. Mike Kovalchick, senior environmental engineer with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, knows how important having more satellite data could be.

Carbon Mapper aircraft flying over landfills in southeast Michigan in 2021 detected significant plumes of exhaust, and a colleague brought this data to his attention. He visited several landfills where the leaks were discovered, determined the causes, and ensured that necessary repairs were made.

Since then, he’s been trying to track emissions using data from a NASA satellite. Kovalchick says aerial monitoring is a big improvement over previous methods that involved walking over the surface of a landfill with a tracking device. The success of that method depends in part on whether the walker’s path coincides with a leak.

Conditions at landfills are changing rapidly, Kovalchick says, and more emissions data at shorter intervals would be a big step forward for operators. “In the long term, I hope landfills take responsibility,” he says. “They’ll see the publicly available data and realize that their landfill is the one that’s leaking.”

Underestimated risks

A study published this year by Carbon Mapper scientists suggests that the extent of methane leaks from landfills may be underestimated. Aerial surveys of 200 active U.S. landfills found emissions from more than half of them, up to 50 times the rate of emissions from oil and gas infrastructure in Texas and California. What’s more, emissions from the landfills persisted for weeks or months.

In May, the nonprofit Industrious Labs released a report based on a review of inspections of 22 landfills by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. Surface monitoring of these landfills found 711 instances of emissions exceeding the EPA’s limit, even though nearly half of the landfills had reported no emissions above that limit.

This situation was compared in a Senate hearing on methane emissions to a fire department that doesn’t track smoke rising from buildings, says Katherine Bluavelt, director of circular economy at Industrious Labs. The difference is that methane is invisible.

Regular flights of Carbon Mapper satellites over the United States could make it possible to determine where this invisible smoke is coming from. Eventually, every region of the world could be covered.

“Methane is the most effective emergency brake against global warming,” says Bluavelt. “We have to show the fire brigade the right way.”