NASA flights detect millions of Arctic methane hotspots [View all]

[NickB79]

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-nasa-flights-millions-arctic-methane.amp

In a new study, scientists with NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), found a way to bridge that gap. In 2017, they used planes equipped with the Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer—Next Generation (AVIRIS—NG), a highly specialized instrument, to fly over some 20,000 square miles (30,000 square kilometers) of the Arctic landscape in the hope of detecting methane hotspots. The instrument did not disappoint.

"We consider hotspots to be areas showing an excess of 3,000 parts per million of methane between the airborne sensor and the ground," said lead author Clayton Elder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "And we detected 2 million of these hotspots over the land that we covered."