NASA is launching a new satellite next week to monitor the atmosphere's carbon flux from a outside-the-planet perspective. It's called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). Hopefully this will complement and give context to our current ~100 monitoring stations around the world (point measurements) for a truly global picture of our atmosphere's carbon inputs and outputs.

According to the NASA OCO website, the satellite will map the globe "once every 16 days for at least two years. It will do so with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of the regional-scale geographic distribution and seasonal variations of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and their sinks-the reservoirs that pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it."

I can't wait to learn what we don't currently know about the carbon system. This is a tool that's long overdue!

Labels: climate change, CO2, satellite imagery