Better knowledge for a better life

Dipl.-Ing.(TU) Werner P. Bauer

In our rapidly changing times, we are flooded with information, have too little time to identify what is really important and forget some of the content. For this reason, I would like to refer again today, or for the first time (I've forgotten), to an article in Science News from November 14, 2019.

California landfills are belching high levels of climate-warming methane

The message is as simple as it is irritating:

„A team of researchers used airborne remote sensing to pinpoint the exact locations of some of California’s biggest belchers of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Of those concentrated "superemitters,” landfills were the biggest sources in the Golden State, followed by dairy farms and the oil and gas industry (SN: 11/18/15).
About 34 to 46 percent of California’s methane emissions comes from 564 point sources, small surface features or bits of infrastructure no more than 10 meters in diameter that still emit large amounts of the gas, the team found.”

"Among those point sources, there were standouts: Landfills contributed 41 percent of emissions. Dairies and the oil and gas sector contributed 26 percent each, Riley Duren, an electrical engineer and research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and colleagues report November 6 in Nature.”

I wonder if the results only apply to California, or if they also apply to other countries.

Searching for the state of California in the Carbon Mappers New Data Portal research prototype, the Methane Summary Statistics show 74.8 K Point Source Emissions Total (kg CH4/hr), 2538 Plumes detected, and 1126 Emission Sources detected. The three main sources contributing to the Point Source Emissions being 30 K from Solid Waste, 21.4 K from Oil and Gas and 19 K from Livestock. Meaning these three sectors account for the 94 % of the emissions.

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