Methane is worse for climate change than carbon emissions. But to stop it, we first need to find it.
To explain how high-tech aerial photography can help save the planet, research scientist Riley Duren refers to a map of Los Angeles, where a pixelated blue and green cloud hovers over a few city blocks. The plume resembles precipitation on a Doppler radar map, but it is more insidious: it’s methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas, leaking into the air. Red and yellow specks at the center of the cloud indicate the highest concentration of the gas, and point to the source—a natural gas pipeline.
The map is part of a series of aerial surveys that also revealed methane leaks in Utah, New Mexico, and other parts of California, all picked up by his team’s airborne infrared cameras. Many of these leaks are the kind that so-called bottom-up tracking—estimates based on counting wellheads and other potential sources of methane—often misses, Duren said.
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