Satellites could verify nations’ claims they are reducing carbon production.
Satellites could verify nations’ claims they are reducing carbon production.
When nearly 200 countries agreed in Paris late last year to work together to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, one crucial detail was left hanging: verification.
Under the accord, the nations backed a set of principles and goals designed to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the point beyond which many scientists think catastrophic climate change will occur. Some experts questioned whether even the pact’s aspirational target of 1.5 degrees Celsius would be low enough to avoid the worst effects.
Now it turns out the world is warming even faster than previously anticipated. NASA announced that last month was the warmest April on record and said it marked the seventh consecutive month of global temperature records. Those changes reinforce the broad scientific agreement that drastic reductions in carbon production are crucial.
The Paris accord was supposed to start us down that path, and it was an important, if tardy and insufficient, step forward. Yet, it is an agreement based on little more than good intentions. The pact is voluntary and is, in effect, an honor system for saving the planet.
That is a significant weakness. Beyond the obvious problem that nations can simply lie about their emissions, there’s the secondary problem of false reporting by private actors. And there’s the possibility of simple error. Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, industrial nations are supposed to issue annual reports on emissions, but the reporting varies in reliability from country to country.
A plan by a coalition of national space agencies, including NASA, could offer the kind of monitoring and verification needed to ensure the signatory countries are living up to their word. The agencies are putting together a network of six to eight satellites that will, among other things, be able to map carbon dioxide emissions, the biggest contributor to global warming, and methane, which has more significant but shorter-term effects, from individual nations.
NASA already has one satellite, called Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, in place, and it will be joined in two years by a second. Japan also has put up a satellite and others are planned by France, China and the European Space Agency.
And the science is still being developed. In the United States, with climate-denying politicians in Congress and running for president, continued funding and support is not guaranteed. Which is yet another indicator of how crucial this fall’s election will be.
— Los Angeles Times