Advancement in pollution detection methods raises questions about current environmental policies. UC Riverside scientists have discovered a massive amount of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, being released from wildfires using a novel detection method. This raises concerns as this source of
Advancement in pollution detection methods raises questions about current environmental policies.scientists have discovered a massive amount of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, being released from wildfires using a novel detection method. This raises concerns as this source of methane emission is not being monitored by state air quality authorities.
“Fires are getting bigger and more intense, and correspondingly, more emissions are coming from them,” said UCR environmental sciences professor and study co-author Francesca Hopkins. “The fires in 2020 emitted what would have been 14 percent of the state’s methane budget if it was being tracked.” “Typically, these sources have been hard to measure, and it’s questionable whether they’re under our control. But we have to try,” Hopkins said. “They’re offsetting what we’re trying to reduce.”
Portable solar spectrometers measuring alongside a higher resolution solar spectrometer. Researchers performed side-by-side measurements before and after field campaigns to ensure instrument stability and check data quality. Photo taken at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Credit: Frausto-Vicencio/UCR
Using the remote technique, the researchers found nearly 20 gigagrams of methane emitted by the Sequoia Lightning Fire Complex. One gigagram is 1,000 metric tons. An elephant weighs around one metric ton. For context, the fire, therefore, contained roughly 20,000 elephants’ worth of the gas. In 2015, the state first established a target of a 40 percent reduction in methane, refrigerants, and other air pollutants contributing to global warming by 2030. The following year, in 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 1383, codifying those reduction targets into law.
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