A team of scientific investigators is now in the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest, aiming to uncover reasons for a mysterious methane hotspot detected from space by a European satellite. The joint project is working to solve the mystery from the air, on the ground, and with mobile laboratories.
“If we can verify the methane emissions found by the satellite, and identify the various sources, then decision makers will have critical information for any actions they are considering,” says Gabrielle Pétron, a scientist from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, working in NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and one of the mission’s investigators. Part of President Obama’s recent Climate Action Plan calls for reductions in U.S. methane emissions. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A team of scientific investigators is now in the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest, aiming to uncover reasons for a mysterious methane hotspot detected from space by a European satellite. The joint project is working to solve the mystery from the air, on the ground, and with mobile laboratories.
“If we can verify the methane emissions found by the satellite, and identify the various sources, then decision makers will have critical information for any actions they are considering,” says Gabrielle Pétron, a scientist from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, working in NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and one of the mission’s investigators. Part of President Obama’s recent Climate Action Plan calls for reductions in U.S. methane emissions. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Last fall, a team of researchers reported that this Southwest hotspot of methane was the largest U.S. methane signal viewed from space. An instrument on a European Space Agency satellite measuring greenhouse gases showed a persistent atmospheric hotspot in the area between 2003 and 2009, which was also detected by light aircraft measurements in the summer of 2014. For the current study, the Japanese GOSAT Satellite, which measures methane, has been re-programmed to focus on the Four Corners region.
The satellite observations were not detailed enough to reveal the sources of the methane in the hotspot. Likely candidates include venting from oil and gas activities, including a process called liquid unloading for coalbed methane extraction; active coal mines; and natural seeps.
Four Corners survey monument image via Shutterstock.
Read more at CU-Boulder.
