Why detecting methane is difficult but crucial work

In Washington, DC, volunteers and activists were walking in the streets and homes to find out the authenticity of the air.

They are armed with industrial screens that discover the presence of many gases. The devices look like walkie devices.

But it is equipped with sensors that reveal the range of methane, and this invisible gas turns into concrete numbers on the screen.

These numbers can be worrying. In a period of 25 hours, researchers found in the neighborhood 13 methane leakage in the open air In concentrations that exceed the minimum explosive. They also found methane leakage inside homes.

It was the main concern of health. Methane and other gases, especially nitrogen oxide, are associated with gas stoves, Risks higher than asthma.

Diamonda Bahn, a healthcare worker as well as the tenant in the Montgomery Community Organization, said that one of three children suffering from asthma in homes tested by the organization.

“It is very worrying and worrying when you test, then you discover that some people live in this condition that they cannot change at the present time,” she says.

Methan may be a threat to human health, but it is also strong greenhouse gases.

While it has a much shorter life in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2), methane is much better in besieging heat and acquires About a quarter From global temperature since manufacturing.

Methan emissions come from a variety of sectors. Among these fossil fuels, waste and agriculture.

But methane is not always easy to note.

It can be discovered using mobile gas sensors such as those used by society researchers. It can also be imagined using infrared cameras, as methane absorbs infrared light.

Monitoring can be mainly, including vehicles installed, or air, including drone -based aircraft measurement. Combine Especially useful.

“There is no perfect solution,” says Andrea Calcan, Program Management Observatory at the Methane International Emissions Observatory, the United Nations Initiative.

There are differentials between the cost of technologies and the scale of the analysis, which can extend to thousands of facilities.

Fortunately, I watched the expansion of methane sensors at reasonable prices in the past decade. So there is no reason to wait for methane monitoring, anyway. She says that the world needs to treat both small leaks and high -mission events.

A wider, satellite is often good in Determine the superior turns: Less frequent events, but they are greatly emitted, such as huge oil and gas leakage. Or they can discover the smaller and more common gates, such as livestock farms.

Riley Doreen, CEO of Carbon Mapper, a non -profit emitter -tracking organization, says current satellites are usually designed to monitor one scale of an emitter.

This is similar to photographing cameras. A higher accuracy phone lens provides a higher accuracy, while a wide -angle lens allows a larger vision.

With a new satellite, the carbon map focuses on high accuracy, high allergies and rapid discovery, to detect emissions more accurately than super dozens. In August 2024, Mapper Carbon Mapper Satellite Tanager-1 launched, along with NASA’s jet laboratory and Earth Planet Labs.

Satellites have struggled to discover methane emissions in certain environments, such as oil wells that were poorly maintained in snowy areas with a lot of vegetation. Low light, high cross lines, mountains and external areas also represent challenges.

Mr. Doreen says that high-resolution tanager-1 can respond to some of these challenges, for example by infiltrating mainly through gaps in cloud cover or forest cover.

He says: “In the oil and gas field, the difference between the insulation of methane emissions from the head of the oil well can be from the adjacent pipeline.” This can help determine exactly from the official.

Mapper carbon began to launch emissions data, relying on Tanager-1 notes, in November.

It will take several years to build a full constellation of satellite, which depends on financing.

Tanager-1 is not the only new satellite that focuses on delivering methane data. Methanesat, a project for the Environmental Defense Fund and Special and Public Partners, was launched in 2024.

With the increasing development of all these satellite technologies, “what was previously invisible is now visible,” says Mr. Doreen. “As a society, we are still getting to know the real fingerprint.”

Better information is clearly needed about methane emissions. Some energy companies have He sought to evade methane detection Using “closed combustion” to hide gas throat.

Translation of knowledge into a work that is not always clear. Methane levels continue to riseEven with the available information as well.

For example, methane alert and response system (MARS) uses satellite data to detect methane emissions to notify companies and governments. The Mars team collected a large amount of methane pillar images, which were verified by humans, to train the ATM model to learn about such columns.

In all sites that Mars is constantly monitored, based on its emissions history, the model is achieved from methane column every day. Then analysts examine any alerts.

“This provides us with a lot of time,” Itziar irakulis Loitxate says.

In the two years since its launch, MARS has sent more than 1,200 major methane spice alerts. Only 1 % of these I led to responses.

However, Ms. Irakulis is still optimistic. Some of these alerts led to direct action such as reforms, including cases where emissions stopped even though the oil and gas operator did not formally make notes.

The contacts are improving all the time, says Irakulis. “I hope we see this 1 %, we’ll see that it grows a lot next year.”

At the level of society, it was strong for residents, such as those in the Washington, DC, to take air pollution readings themselves and use them to face wrong information. “Now that we have known better, we can do what is better,” says Joel Nuri from the power of religions, light between religions and light.