An Eye in the Sky on CO2
A new NASA satellite will monitor regional carbon dioxide sources and sinks.
Earlier this summer, NASA successfully launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO-2 satellite. The satellite is designed to build a much more detailed picture of where CO2 is emitted - both from natural and man-made sources - and absorbed. While ground-based monitoring of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere has great precision, it doesn't tell us much about where CO2 is coming from, and especially going to. We know oceans and forests take up large amounts of CO2, but there are vast gaps in our knowledge of just where this is taking place on a regional scale. According to Dr. David Crisp, the Science Team Leader for OCO-2 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the satellite will be able to build a detailed global map of CO2 sources and sinks.
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