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Satellite Could Help Track Disappearing Carbon Dioxide

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The New York Times

Published: February 23, 2009

Thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide waft into the air from the burning of fossil fuels each year. About half of the 30 billion tons stays in the air. The other half disappears. Where it all goes, nobody quite knows.

With the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a NASA satellite scheduled to be launched Tuesday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, scientists hope to better understand the comings and goings of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas behind the warming of the planet.

The new data could help improve climate models and the understanding of the "carbon sinks" such as oceans and forests that absorb much of the carbon dioxide.

Year-to-year variations - in some years, all of the excess carbon dioxide disappears; in some years, all of it stays in the air - indicate that some of the sinks might fill up and spill some of the absorbed carbon dioxide back into the air.

"Something out there is changing dramatically," said David Crisp, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the principal investigator of the mission.

Humans account for only 2 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions - natural sources such as the decay of dead plants account for the other 98 percent - but that is enough to tip the balance.

Scientists have good estimates of how much carbon dioxide is released by the burning of fossil fuels, but other human influences such as clearing of forests and the harvesting of crops "affect CO2 in ways we don't understand," Crisp said.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will measure carbon dioxide levels by using an instrument with three spectrometers to analyze light reflected off Earth. At the same time, the instrument will make a similar measurement for oxygen. Combining the two measurements gives the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.

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