Satellites could verify nations’ claims that 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 2C above pre-industrial levels, the point beyond which many scientists believe catastrophic climate change will occur. Some experts questioned whether even the pact’s aspirational target of 1.5C would be low enough to avoid the worst effects.
Now it turns out that the world is warming even faster than previously anticipated. Climate experts say that 2016 will likely be the hottest year on record, by the widest margin on record. 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, with international shaming of transgressors the only truncheon available. Each country is responsible for measuring and attesting to its own emissions. It is, in effect, an honour 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, with developing countries issuing reports less frequently. 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 that 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. The monitoring idea grew out of an effort to understand “climate feedback,” such as how changes in ocean temperatures influence air temperatures, which in turn affect ocean temperatures. But scientists realised the collected data also could be mined to verify emissions.
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. A Nasa official said it was difficult to estimate what the total cost would be, but others suggest it could be in the billions of dollars.
And the science is still being developed. One trick is figuring out how to separate readings of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions from naturally occurring, uncontrollable emissions – forest fires, volcanoes and rotting vegetation, for instance. But the scientists are confident they can make it work.
And they should. Of course, such a system is contingent on government funding.