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Satellite Will Track Carbon Dioxide
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Feb 22, 2009 11:55pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Monday, February 23, 2009 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By KENNETH CHANG
Published: February 22, 2009
Thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide waft into the air from the burning of fossil fuels each year. About half stays in the air. The other half disappears. Where it all goes, nobody quite knows.
With the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a NASA satellite scheduled to be launched on Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, scientists hope to understand better the comings and goings of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas behind the warming of the planet.
The new data could help improve climate models and the understanding of the “carbon sinks,” like oceans and forests, that absorb much of the carbon dioxide.
Annual variations — in some years, all of the excess carbon dioxide disappears; in some years, all of it stays in the air — indicate that some of the sinks may fill up and spill some of the absorbed carbon dioxide back into the air.
“Something out there is changing dramatically,” said David Crisp, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is the principal investigator of the mission.
Humans account for 2 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions — natural sources like the decay of dead plants account for the rest — but that is enough to tip the balance.
Before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, carbon dioxide levels were at about 280 parts per million. The level is 387 parts per million today and is projected to rise sharply in the coming decades. |
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