Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, some 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, about a quarter of the global warming we see today is caused by methane released by humans.
That’s why methane leaks are a significant problem, particularly those from the natural gas industry where accidental emissions are common.
The first step in tackling this problem is to measure it; to map the emissions and find out how much methane is leaking. To that end, the European Space Agency and NASA have a variety of remote sensing satellites that can spot methane leaks across the globe at various resolutions.
