18/05/2023
Public sector climate change efforts are bolstered by private satellites.
Space has become a crucial front in the fight against climate change, with satellites able to pinpoint the sources of industrial pollution and others monitoring hurricane movements hour by hour.
The number of launches is increasing both literally and figuratively, which has led to more collaboration between public and private space agencies.
Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions has proven to be one of the most successful collaborations.
One of the satellites of the Copernicus mission of the European Union Space Programme continuously measures the atmospheric concentration of the potent planet-warming gas methane.
The spacecraft scans the entire surface of the planet, but because of its low resolution—a few kilometers—it is difficult to pinpoint the exact source.
Private businesses can fill that gap.
Nine miniature satellites the size of microwaves are currently in orbit with the Canadian GHGSat, one of them. Their objective was to search for methane leaks while flying over oil and gas facilities. They can examine each location in greater detail by orbiting at a lower altitude.
The company's founder, Stephane Germain, advised AFP to "think of it as the wide angle lens camera, as opposed to the telephoto lens camera." The Copernicus team communicates regularly with GHGSat, giving them instructions on where to position their cameras.
Then, GHGSat sells its data to oil firms like Total, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell.
Since their customers are demanding better accounting of emissions' life cycles, "more and more companies are interested in that because they realize they have to better understand their own carbon footprints," said Germain.
Unlit flares, which are intended to burn off the gas, are a frequent source of methane emissions.
According to GHGSat, it has prevented the release of 10 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or the annual energy consumption of 1.3 million homes.
The French company Absolut Sensing and other businesses intend to enter the market. Another company, Kayrros, is examining Copernicus data to find the biggest leaks despite not having its own satellites.
- Technological developments
"A problem is evident when looking at the big picture. The small one then sharpens its focus and provides someone with information. Therefore, this complements each other very well," Josef Aschbacher, director of the European Space Agency, told AFP of such public-private partnerships.
But the mainstay of the Earth observation system continues to be government agency constellations, which are made up primarily of big, extremely expensive satellites.
With new missions like CO2M, which measures the carbon dioxide released specifically by human activity, Copernicus will soon enter a new era. About 30 NASA Earth observation missions have been launched.
The US space agency has launched the TEMPO mission to measure pollutants in the troposphere above North America, the TROPICS mission to track tropical weather systems, including hurricanes, hour by hour, and the SWOT mission to survey the Earth's surface water in unprecedented detail.
Technology advancements have made it possible to measure things that were previously thought to be impractical, according to Aschbacher.
Meteorological satellites, such as those managed by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), play a crucial role in addition to these scientific missions.
Their data, gathered over decades, have shown significant changes to the world's climate systems, ranging from warming sea and land temperatures to retreating Antarctic ice sheets, providing data for the current climate science models.
They can, however, increasingly contribute significantly to the process of adjusting to a warming world. Better forecasts are necessary to lessen the effects of natural disasters, according to Mitch Goldberg, chief scientist at NOAA, who spoke to AFP.
The agency has been expanding its collaborations with business. For instance, it collaborates with GeoOptics to gather data on the humidity or temperature of the atmosphere.
A report by Inmarsat and Globant claims that if current satellite technologies were widely used, carbon emissions could be reduced by 5.5 gigatons, quadrupling the 1.5 gigatons currently possible thanks to the sector.
These savings could be attained, for instance, by facilitating the decarbonization of the aviation and maritime industries through trip optimization, weather routing, and air traffic control management.
