go to homepage
News

NEW: Global Data and Enhanced Functionality Available on the Carbon Mapper Data Portal

Published on: Jul 11, 2023

Back

This week, Carbon Mapper released exciting enhancements to the Carbon Mapper Data Portal which now features new data on global sources of methane plus improved functionality to make this data more accessible and actionable. We invite you to visit the portal to explore these new features and data for yourself!

Carbon Mapper’s mission is to fill gaps in the emerging global ecosystem of methane and COmonitoring systems by delivering data at facility scale that is precise, timely, and accessible to empower science-based decision making and action. Improving the quantity and usability of our data — which is free and open to the public — is foundational to this mission.

New Global Data

For the first time, Carbon Mapper offers data from multiple sensors on high emission point sources of methane from many countries and sectors around the globe.

The portal now displays over 9,000 methane plumes observed by Carbon Mapper airborne surveys of key regions in Latin America, the US and Canada, as well as global observations by NASA JPL’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument onboard the International Space Station.

This expansion of Carbon Mapper’s platform demonstrates how a “tiered observing system” (integrating data from multiple remote sensing technologies) can help advance global understanding of methane and improve emissions identification, quantification, and ultimately reduction.

A methane plume observed by Carbon Mapper airborne surveys in Chile from the waste sector, and one observed by NASA JPL’s EMIT in Algeria from the oil and gas sector are examples of new global data now available on the Carbon Mapper Data Portal.

A methane plume observed by Carbon Mapper airborne surveys in Chile from the waste sector, and one observed by NASA JPL’s EMIT in Algeria from the oil and gas sector are examples of new global data now available on the Carbon Mapper Data Portal.

“We’re applying lessons from over a decade of field research to routinely integrate data from multiple observing systems to detect and quantify methane emissions at the level of individual facilities. Making methane point source emissions data transparent and freely available is one Carbon Mapper’s contributions to the expanding global ecosystem of monitoring and mitigation programs. This also helps set the stage for the pending operational scale-up of these data sets using the satellites being developed in partnership with NASA JPL and Planet Labs PBC,” said Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper CEO. 

New and Enhanced Functionality

Data Portal users may notice some immediate differences — from the base map to the plume images themselves (now with an improved look and color scheme that more clearly defines different methane concentrations). Moreover, added capabilities make Carbon Mapper emissions data more accessible for different groups applying it in various ways. For example, users can now search for plumes by sector, date, or emissions rate. Plus, we’ve added a new bulk download feature which allows select users to request full datasets.

Some additional portal enhancements include:

  • A new look and color scheme for our methane plume visualizations that make it easier to see concentration gradients
  • Attribution of observed plumes to major emission sectors
  • Individual or bulk plume downloads
  • Ability to filter and sort plumes by observation date or emission rate
  • Flexible map search using Mapbox map view and list view toggle
  • Ability to view a plume’s location in Google Maps
  • Area coverage and plume layer toggles (which allow users to see where observations were made)
  • Information on the observational source of each plume (i.e., which instrument provided the data)
  • Faster and more interactive application performance
An overview of methane plume image enhancements now available on the Carbon Mapper Data Portal.

An overview of methane plume image enhancements now available on the Carbon Mapper Data Portal.

Questions

If you have questions or feedback on the data and Data Portal features and functionality, please visit our Data Portal FAQ or send us an email.