Latest Insights
Study finds landfill point source emissions have an outsized impact and opportunity to tackle U.S. waste methane
Study finds landfill point source emissions have an outsized impact and opportunity to tackle U.S. waste methane
Analysis of 1M aerial measurements reveals insights from oil and gas production in key regions
Accurately measuring methane emissions from the oil and gas sector is vital to mitigating climate change. However, most existing estimates are inaccurate or incomplete. A new study by researchers at Stanford University, Kairos Aerospace, NASA’s Jet Propulsion...
Data Dispatch: Repeat Observations of Global Waste Methane Sources
Carbon Mapper Data Dispatches are regular communications highlighting insights and information from the Carbon Mapper Data Portal. We believe transparency is critical in advancing global efforts to mitigate climate change. That’s why Carbon Mapper is committed to...
Carbon Mapper Share New Data Portal and Research Insights at 2023 AGU Fall Meeting
Carbon Mapper scientists will join thousands of participants at this year’s annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting to advance Earth and space sciences. The annual meeting brings together more than 25,000 attendees from +100 countries to present their...
See Our Data
The Carbon Mapper program is built upon the ongoing work of our current science and research team. Since 2016, our experts and our collaborators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Arizona State University have used aircraft equipped with prototype versions of the Carbon Mapper satellite instruments along with other observing systems and data sets to assess methane emissions in representative regions and economic sectors across the U.S.
Our Plan
Carbon Mapper has three main objectives:
Help accelerate mitigation of methane super-emitters
Independently verify power plant CO2 emissions globally
Deliver 25+ other hyperspectral indicators for carbon and ecosystem management
To meet these objectives, we will deploy a constellation of satellites and aircraft equipped with high performance visible/infrared imaging spectrometers with the ability to identify, quantify and attribute global methane and CO2 point-source emissions at the scale of individual facilities and equipment.
The methane and CO2 data will be made freely available via Carbon Mapper’s global data portal to ensure maximum transparency. To promote trust and broader adoption, the State of California will maintain its own data portal and will independently review, ground-truth and validate the Carbon Mapper data while advancing new mitigation strategies and working to expand those strategies through its partners in other jurisdictions across the U.S. and globally. Additionally, Carbon Mapper will maximize the use of the data by supporting an ongoing research program and by conducting outreach and stakeholder engagement to ensure policy relevance.
Urgency
As a society, we have less than 10 years to meet critical milestones in greenhouse gas emission reductions (particularly methane) and improved conservation of ecosystems, biodiversity, and other natural resources. There’s still time to act but meeting these ambitious targets requires an all-hands-on-deck mobilization on many fronts without delay. Carbon Mapper’s goals include contributing to the growing community of organizations working to offer science-based guidance to decision makers at all levels of society.
Progress and Next Steps
Carbon Mapper is deploying a multi-scale emissions monitoring system from air and space. We’re currently building two demonstration satellites to launch in 2024, with a goal to expand to a fully operational constellation of many satellites at a future date. The latter will provide daily to weekly sampling of high priority regions globally. Meanwhile, since the climate clock is ticking, we’re working to help accelerate near-term mitigation action through expanded surveys of key regions in North and South America using our remote-sensing aircraft.