The job of monitoring Earth’s carbon cycle and humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions is increasingly supported from above, thanks to the terabytes of data pouring down to Earth from satellites.
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| Carbon dioxide flux over China, measured by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite. |
Five papers published in Science today provide data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission. They show Earth’s carbon cycle in unprecedented detail, including the effects of fires in Southeast Asia, the growth rates of Amazonian forests, and the record-breaking rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide during the 2015-16 El Niño.
Another satellite study released two weeks ago revealed rapid biomass loss across the tropics, showing that we have been overlooking the largest sources of terrestrial carbon emissions. While we may worry about land clearing, twice as much biomass is being lost from tropical forests through degradation processes such as harvesting.
The next step in our understanding of Earth’s carbon dynamics will be to build sensors, satellites and computer models that can distinguish human activity from natural processes.
Read the story from the CSIRO blog - “Satellites are giving us a commanding view of Earth’s carbon cycle.”
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