December 17, 2024
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To control greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, the US embraces passenger aviation
United Airlines is partnering with NOAA as part of a broader federal strategy to better monitor the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Information collected by a passenger aircraft can help scientists cross-check emissions measurements collected at the same location by other methods, such as satellites or ground-based instruments.
Michal Krakowiak/Getty Images
KLIMAWIRE | A new partnership between NOAA and United Airlines will soon help federal scientists better monitor domestic greenhouse gas emissions.
The project, which will begin next year, will equip a single Boeing 737 with scientific instruments designed to monitor carbon dioxide, methane and other climate-warming gases. As the plane zigzags across the country, stopping in five cities a day, scientists will collect valuable data on emissions from both rural and urban landscapes.
This information can help scientists verify emissions measurements collected at the same locations using other methods, such as satellites or ground-based instruments. And it can help city and land managers pinpoint locations where they’re underestimating their emissions.
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“It’s a real opportunity to move all the action to understanding emissions,” said Colm Sweeney, associate science director of NOAA’s global monitoring laboratory and chief scientist for the laboratory’s aircraft program. “We’re not trying to regulate any emissions, we’re trying to understand what those emissions profiles look like.”
The project is part of a broader federal strategy to coordinate and improve greenhouse gas control efforts across federal agencies. That effort has been ramping up in the last weeks of the Biden administration, amid fears that the incoming Trump administration will. default or undo the so-called national greenhouse gas monitoring strategy.
The partnership between NOAA and United Airlines, announced at a White House super-polluter summit in July, is known as the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement. This means NOAA provides staff and equipment but no funding.
NOAA already conducts several data-gathering missions using research aircraft, but federal scientists say partnering with commercial airlines opens new doors for tracking greenhouse gases. Research flights are expensive and aircraft are limited, installing sensors on commercial aircraft allows researchers to easily collect continuous measurements from whatever flights would be made.
“This collaboration represents an important leap forward in efforts to control and mitigate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions,” NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick said in a statement. “If we can harness the capabilities of commercial aircraft, we will be poised to make rapid advances in our understanding of greenhouse gas emissions that can inform policy.”
‘The ship is already sailing’
In 2023, the Biden administration issued a roadmap for a new national greenhouse gas measurement, monitoring and information system.
The national strategy It established a data portal known as the US Center for Greenhouse Gases, designed to consolidate emissions observations from a wide variety of sources. It also included several recommendations for expanding, consolidating, and coordinating efforts to control greenhouse gases across federal agencies and among private sector partners.
Coordination is key to improving greenhouse gas data, experts say. Most federal science agencies, including NASA, NOAA, and the EPA, have their own initiatives to monitor and estimate emissions in different sectors of the economy. The new NOAA project is just one example.
But until recently, there has been no attempt to consolidate these efforts and combine the data.
“We have so much information, so much diversity, sources — it’s kind of an acronym soup,” said NASA climate scientist Lesley Ott. “And that can be difficult for scientists to navigate, too.”
That is changing now, as federal scientists coordinate their monitoring programs, synthesize their data, and collaborate with private companies and NGOs to improve data collection efforts. Those efforts are being redoubled even as President-elect Donald Trump — who has repeatedly rejected the science of human-caused climate change — prepares to take office for his second term, casting doubt on the future of national greenhouse gas monitoring efforts.
Trump has promised to increase oil and gas development in the US and withdraw from the Paris Agreement for a second time. Project 2025, Trump’s second-term policy plan led by The Heritage Foundation, calls for dramatic cuts and reorganization of federal science agencies, including NOAA and the EPA.
While Trump has previously distanced himself from the policy plans, he recently named some of the plan’s architects as candidates for positions in his new administration.
But federal scientists say they remain committed to the mission regardless of any change in administration, and are cautiously optimistic that a combination of economic forces and global momentum in efforts to reduce emissions will continue their efforts over the next four years.
“I think what we’re all focused on is not speculating, not getting too carried away because you don’t know,” Ott said. “I think what we’re really focused on is fulfilling our mission.”
Riley Duren, CEO of greenhouse gas monitoring nonprofit Carbon Mapper, added that federal regulation is just one aspect of efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions.
“My view is that to some extent the ship is sailing around the world in the use of data-driven rules and market mechanisms, and there is momentum behind that change,” he said. “And I think a lot of policy makers – if they think critically – will see the motivations for packaging to support those things, because that’s where industry and civil society is going.”
Reprinted E&E News Courtesy of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
