Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit group, will use data from NASA’s EMIT mission, as well as existing onboard and future satellite instruments, to study landfills for methane emissions. Observations from the Surface Mineral Dust Survey (EMIT) and other NASA science instruments will form part of a global study of point-source methane emissions from landfills such as landfills. The multi-year effort is developed and run by the nonprofit Carbon Mapper.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about a quarter to a third of human-induced global warming. The aim of the new initiative is to establish a baseline assessment of global dumps emitting high levels of methane. This information can assist decision makers as they work to reduce atmospheric concentrations of the gas and limit climate change.

Methane produced in the waste disposal sector accounts for approximately 20% of anthropogenic methane emissions. Methane retains heat in the atmosphere 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide. But where carbon dioxide stays in the air for centuries, methane only lives for a year or two in the atmosphere. This means that if methane emissions are significantly reduced, some abrupt slowdown of atmospheric warming can be achieved.

“There is currently limited information on methane emissions from the global waste sector. Fully understanding the high point sources of landfill emissions is a critical step towards reducing them,” said Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper CEO.

“New technological capabilities that make these emissions visible and therefore actionable have the potential to change the game and increase our collective understanding of near-term opportunities in this often forgotten industry.”

Carbon Mapper has received a grant from the Grantham Environmental Defense Fund to support activities related to the Landfill Initiative, including potential funding for airborne methane research by NASA. The project will include the first remote survey of more than 1,000 managed landfills in key locations in the United States and Canada, as well as Latin America, Africa and Asia, in 2023.

To collect data from these regions, the researchers will use aircraft-based sensors, including the Next Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG), developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In addition, they will use Arizona State University’s Global Weather Observatory from the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Sciences, which uses another imaging spectrometer built by JPL.

As part of the Carbon Mapper project, the researchers will also analyze methane EMIT data. In July 2022, the Imaging Spectrometer operated by JPL was installed on the International Space Station to measure the mineral content on the surface of the major dust-forming regions on Earth.