NASA Captures Carbon Dioxide Emission From Outer Space (Video)

Many people have already become aware that the impact of global warming is taking effect on the Earth. Signs such as extreme heat and melting of the ice caps are the most common that people can see and feel. Various organizations have been working hand in hand to defeat this devastating phenomenon. Now, NASA captures and maps the carbon dioxide emission from space.

In high resolution, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 or OCO-2 satellite captures the carbon dioxide emissions. It has been revealed that the carbon dioxide widespread across major urban areas and lesser pockets of high emissions derives from individual cities.

A team from the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki were able to study and provide the first direct examination if anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the OCO-2 over three major polluted regions. They were able to investigate the Central Europe, East Asia and Eastern U.S. Their study was led by Janne Hakkarainen and was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The OCO-2 was launched in 2014. Its path mostly covers the globe every 16 days. It records the carbon dioxide through measuring the sunlight that bounces off the planet's surface. As the light penetrated in the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide molecules take in parts of the infrared light. OCO-2 then detects that infrared differences.

However, the researchers were challenged because they have to untangle the current carbon dioxide emissions to the older ones. As the gas hangs around the atmosphere for over a century, the recent production of carbon emission by humans are only a small fraction of the overall carbon dioxide that are recorded by the OCO-2 as its review down at the Earth's surface.

Janne Hakkarainen shared that, "Currently, the background level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 400 parts per million, and human emissions within the past year may add only something like three parts per million to that total," according to Cosmos.

In the study, the team conducted a new data processing technique. It details for seasonal changes in carbon dioxide, the background level of the carbon dioxide and the plant growth and dormancy.

To get the assurance that they are using the correct method, the experts compared their results with the nitrogen dioxide measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instruments. As follows, the two measurements correlated. The researchers claimed that their new method produced accurate results.