SATELLITES | POLLUTION WATCH
NASA image shows how carbon dioxide shifts
STATE OF THE EARTH Technological advancements like miniaturization of sensors, high-speed data transfer and enhanced storage capabilities have led to a new wave of satellites specially built for tracking pollution and pinpointing sources of emissions. By Aditya Chaturvedi The impact of global warming would be much more severe than the Great Depression; it would be ten times as deep as the more recent Great Recession, which still so rattles us. And it would not be temporary. It is hard to imagine any system surviving that kind of decline intact, no matter how big. — David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming —
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alling Climate Change an impending catastrophe would amount to a fatalistic resignation — deeming it inevitable and shirking from what ought to be done. As we build our future on unprecedented technological progress, we undermine the climate at our own peril. Greenhouse gases such as CO2, NO2 and methane are the main causes of global warming, leading to Climate Change and extreme weather conditions. And the fight against pollution is an essential part of mitigating Climate Change. Amidst this bleak view, satellites have come to our rescue. Technological advancements like miniaturization of sensors, high-speed data transfer and enhanced storage capabilities have led to a new wave of sat-
ellites specially built for monitoring pollution and tracking the sources of emissions. This has enabled organizations to gain actual insights into the nature of pollution and formulate strategies to tackle it. “The advent of smaller, more affordable satellite platforms, combined with technological breakthroughs in the miniaturization of instruments, is opening a new world of possibilities to gather even more critical data [in this field],” says Jean-Francois Gauthier, Director, Business Development, GHGSat, a NewSpace startup based in Montreal, Canada. Around a dozen governments and private companies are planning to launch satellites that can pinpoint the source of pollutants and www.geospatialworld.net | July-August 2019
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