Methane satellites find landfills with the same climate impact as several hundred thousand cars

CO 2 is less powerful than methane. The entire globe is scanned by researchers from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research. The climate impact of one and a half million cars is equal to the methane emissions from a landfill in Argentina. They identify new low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change by detecting large emissions from landfills. The work was published in a scientific journal.

The second largest contributor to the greenhouse effect is methane. Over 100 years, it has a large global warming potential. CO 2 is less potent than methane as a greenhouse gas. Methane can be made less harmful by being burned and converted to CO 2 when it is released through human activity. You can use it in boilers or stove if you capture it. Satellite data has been used to locate a number of low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change. There are four landfills in Argentina, India and Pakistan.

The Dutch space instrument Tropomi was used by the SRON methane research team. In terms of urban emissions, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Lahore and Mumbai were the top performers. The team asked the Canadian satellite GHGSat to zoom in and see that landfills are responsible for a lot of emissions. The climate impact of 1.5 million cars is equal to the methane emissions from the landfill in Buenos Argentina. The impact of 130,000 to 500,000 cars on the three other landfills is still being done.

"Methane is odorless and tasteless, so it's hard to detect leaks," says the lead author. Satellites are the best choice for this. Methane is pumped into the atmosphere by super-emitters. It's difficult to watch because you can solve it without much effort. Separating and composting the organic waste would greatly reduce methane production. You can still flare methane even in mixed waste. If we act now, we will see a reduction in global warming because methane only lasts for 10 years in the atmosphere. Reducing methane emissions isn't enough, we also need to limit CO 2 in order to slow down climate change.

More information: Joannes D. Maasakkers, Daniel J. Varon, Aldís Elfarsdóttir, Jason McKeever, Dylan Jervis, Gourav Mahapatra, Sudhanshu Pandey, Alba Lorente, Tobias Borsdorff, Lodewijck R. Foorthuis, Berend J. Schuit, Paul Tol, Tim A. van Kempen, Richard van Hees, Ilse Aben, 'Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills', Science Advances, 2022. science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9683 Journal information: Science Advances