German Satellite Achieves First Simultaneous CO2 and NO2 Measurements from Power Plant Emissions
The newly developed approach allows scientists to directly measure #CO2 and #NO2 over individual power plants, providing critical data for understanding atmospheric processes and industrial #emissions. The findings, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, demonstrate that EnMAP can effectively track emissions over distances of several tens of kilometers, a feat previously considered unfeasible for a satellite not explicitly designed for atmospheric measurements.
Power plants release CO2 and nitrogen oxides (NOx) as part of their regular operations, both of which significantly contribute to air pollution and climate change. CO2, a primary #GreenhouseGas, and NOx, a precursor to ground-level #ozone, have traditionally been challenging to monitor at high spatial resolutions from space.
Most satellite instruments lack the fine-scale detail required to distinguish individual emission sources against the background atmospheric concentrations. #EnMAP, however, overcomes these challenges with its unique capability to capture detailed 30 x 30 meter resolution imagery.
"Using the EnMAP data, we were able to determine the distribution of CO2 and NO2 in emission plumes from individual PowerPlants - for example, from facilities in #SaudiArabia and the South African #Highveld region, one of the world's largest emission hotspots," said Christian Borger, the study's first author and former postdoctoral researcher in the Satellite Remote Sensing Group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Borger now conducts research at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (#ECMWF) in #Bonn.
