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Able to Measure Air Pollution Levels, NASA Satellite Monitors Giant Coal Power Plants

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To measure the level of air pollution on Earth, NASA has operated two Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) and OCO-3 satellites. Photos/NASA/Photopolska

FLORIDA – To measure the level air pollution on Earth, NASA has operated two Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) and OCO-3 satellites. Second satellite it is capable of accurately measuring carbon dioxide emissions from outer space.

The OCO-2 spacecraft was launched in 2014 and OCO-3 was installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019. Both satellites focus on mapping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, in a region and continent.

In the first study, NASA has measured fluctuations in the amount of carbon dioxide released by Europe’s largest coal-fired power plant. The object of this new study is the Bełchatów Power Station which uses brown coal in Poland.

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This is the first time carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources have been accurately measured from space. This first study paved the way for independent monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Detecting individual anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide has so far been impossible due to the high concentrations of the gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, scientists have mastered using satellites to accurately measure emissions of the more potent greenhouse gas methane.

“We learned that we actually can understand a lot more about anthropogenic emissions than we previously thought,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, OCO-3 mission scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 2023).

By analyzing factory emission bursts such as those detected by satellites between 2017 and 2022, the research team saw changes in carbon dioxide levels consistent with hourly fluctuations. The Bełchatów Power Station, which is capable of producing up to 5,102 megawatts of power, has also emitted more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since it became operational in 1988.

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“The approach with the OCO-2 and OCO-3 satellites can be applied to more power plants or modified for carbon dioxide emissions from cities or countries. This satellite provides a more detailed picture of carbon dioxide emissions, so it can help track the effectiveness of policies to reduce emissions,” said Ray Nassar, a senior researcher in Environment and Climate Change Canada.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is currently developing a special satellite constellation to measure carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources. The constellation, called CO2M and announced in 2021, will reach space in late 2025 or early 2026.

Meanwhile, NASA said it would expand the operation of OCO-3, which features a mapping observation mode, suitable for monitoring emission sources, such as individual power plants. “We saw that taking measurements at the right time and at the right scale was very important,” added Chatterjee.

(wib)

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