The device, called an imaging spectrometer, has identified more than 50 methane"super-emitters" in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Southwestern United States since it was installed in July aboard the International Space Station, NASA said on Tuesday.
The spectrometer was built primarily to identify the mineral composition of dust blown into the atmosphere from Earth’s deserts and other arid regions by measuring the wavelengths of light reflected from the surface soil in those areas. Circling Earth once every 90 minutes from its perch aboard the space station some 420 km high, EMIT is able to scan vast tracts of the planet dozens of miles across while also focusing in on areas as small as a soccer field.
Compared with CO2, which lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, methane persists for only about a decade, meaning that reductions in methane emissions have a more immediate impact on planetary warming.