Open AccessDETERMINATION OF METHANE SOURCEX GLOBALLY BY SCIAMACHY
Author(s) -
J. G. Park,
S. Y. Park
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the international archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences/international archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.264
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1682-1777
pISSN - 1682-1750
DOI - 10.5194/isprsarchives-xli-b8-291-2016
Subject(s) - sciamachy , greenhouse gas , methane , environmental science , chemistry , atmospheric sciences , troposphere , zoology , physics , geology , organic chemistry , biology , oceanography
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) has increased by nearly 30%, and the Methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) concentration has more than doubled. CH<sub>4</sub> is the second most important greenhouse gas, after CO<sub>2</sub>. Emissions, extrapolated from measurements of actual gas flux from wetlands, vary from place to place, even within the same wetland. This high variability makes large-scale estimates difficult and means that average emissions levels include a large degree of estimated uncertainty. The SCIAMACHY instrument on the European Space Agency satellite ENVISAT measured greenhouse gases in the troposphere and stratosphere. In this study, the CH<sub>4</sub> source area is extracted by estimating the concentrations of methane emissions from time-series satellite data. Contamination of the data by cloud is interpolated both spatially and temporally. It is assumed that methane emission is negligible over ocean and that the concentration in the ocean area is due to advection from land. Background CH<sub>4</sub> concentration on land was defined as the ocean CH<sub>4</sub> concentration at the same latitude. Land CH<sub>4</sub> emission concentrations show that areas of concentrated high CH<sub>4</sub> emission are not in paddy fields only but also in broadleaf evergreen areas in South America and Central Africa.