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Cities: responsible for 70% of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions
A 10-km-resolution map indicates the distribution and intensity of fossil fuel CO2 emission sources. The regions with greatest emission intensity are indicated by red and black (urbanized areas and associated large power plants). The black circles indicate a vision for future surface measurement networks concentrated within the 23 existing megacities. Blue circles indicate the 14 additional megacities projected to exist by 2025. The dashed rectangles indicate the fields of regard of three remote-sensing instruments that if hosted on geostationary satellites would offer sustained, wall-to-wall mapping of nearly every emission source. The satellite and surface network data, integrated with improved high-resolution emission estimates would provide a robust system for assessing and informing policies. Map: (EDGAR version 4.0) 2009.
Megacities observing system for Los Angeles
In-situ sensors located around the LA basin provide continuous, high accuracy measurements of greenhouse gas (GHG) mixing ratios of CO2, CH4, and CO. A remote-sensing instrument on Mt. Wilson provides multiple scans per day of the basin to measure slant-column mixing ratios. Another remote-sensing instrument at Caltech provides continuous daytime measurements of column mixing ratios. Aircraft and mobile laboratories provide infrequent but intensive measurements of mixing ratios. Satellites are beginning to provide remote-sensing measurements of LA. Other instruments (not shown) measure winds and boundary layer height.
Monitoring Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Space
From right to left: NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite (target launch 2014) will provide nearly global coverage that periodically sees a subset of cities. The Japanese Space Agency's GOSAT satellite (launched in 2009) makes observations for a subset of cities with lower precision than OCO-2. NASA's OCO-3 payload on the International Space Station (target launch 2016) will periodically raster-scan selected cities to achieve denser spatial maps than available from GOSAT and OCO-2. Finally, the next generation of remote-sensing instruments, if deployed on 3 satellites in geostationary orbits would provide near-continuous, wall-to-wall mapping of nearly every urban area on earth.
Overview
The Megacities Carbon Project is being established for the megacities of Los Angeles and Paris, and will leverage robust methods for assessing carbon emissions and rapid improvements in measurement technology to monitor the atmospheric trends of carbon attributed to the world’s largest cities.
