Dive Brief:
- Google and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed an artificial intelligence model that can track global methane emissions from space, the tech giant announced last week.
- The model, called MAPL-EMIT, is a tool that monitors methane emissions using NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument. EMIT is an advanced imaging spectrometer attached to the exterior of the International Space Station.
- Google and NASA introduced the methane emissions-tracking AI model in a study published in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) earlier this month. The duo said in a Sept. 9 release that the model would make “methane sources easier to find at scale” and enable “faster, more targeted climate mitigation.”
Dive Insight:
The tool seeks to tackle a “critical bottleneck” in finding the source of methane emissions by automating the detection and localization of methane point sources through an advanced AI framework or deep learning, Google and NASA wrote in the study.
The tech company and space agency said MAPL-EMIT’s AI model was trained on 3.6 million physics-simulated methane plumes — clouds of methane gas released into the atmosphere — to help it see through complex, cluttered landscapes. As a result, the researchers found that it can detect 50% more methane leaks than human experts can and uncover over 23,000 hidden methane plumes globally, which include 24 of the 25 largest-emitting landfills in the world.
Municipal solid waste landfills rank as the third-largest source of methane emissions generated from human activities in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“The [model] is used to automate enhancement quantification, plume segmentation, and source localization, including for multiple overlapping plumes,” the study notes.
The collaboration with NASA builds on Google’s work to manage and curb superpollutants — greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere more than carbon dioxide on a per-ton basis — like methane. Earlier this year, the global search engine and tech conglomerate announced a partnership with AI-powered recycling and waste sorting company AMP. The deal will generate carbon credits for Google through its recycling project and enable it to remove 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, in addition to curbing methane emissions generated by landfill waste.
