Wednesday, April 25, 2012

CarbonSat - On the trail of greenhouse gases

Space Daily via SPX: Astrium, Europe's leading space company, will be pushing ahead with the preparation of CarbonSat, a new climate satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA), over the next 22 months. In early April 2012, ESA announced its decision to award Astrium a contract to define the CarbonSat satellite.
Under Astrium's lead, an international team of engineers will move forward consolidating the various components that make up the CarbonSat satellite.
CarbonSat will measure the global concentration and distribution of the two most important greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) - with unprecedented accuracy, providing climate scientists with essential data for climate analysis and for refining climate simulation computer models.
Carbon dioxide and methane are the two main greenhouse gases causing global climate change. Comprehensive knowledge of the sources and global distribution of these gases is a pre-requisite for predicting the Earth's climate.
CarbonSat will provide measurement data with a spatial resolution better than 2x2km. For the first time, this should enable scientists to quantify localized sources of CO2 such as coal-fired power plants and emissions from cities as well as geological sources such as volcanoes....
Image of CarbonSat from Astrium's website

1 comment:

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