Methane from human activity represents nearly 30% of emissions affecting the climate. To draw up a map of these, Google teamed up with an environmental NGO with the objective of finding the sources of the leaks.
Google is a sprawling company, and its activities are obviously not limited to its search engine. Having made commitments in ecological terms, the Mountain View firm is investing massively in various partnerships and in the development of options for current users. In a recent publication on its blog, Google announced a new partnership with a very specific objective.
Mapping methane leaks
Methane is a gas massively released by human activities. A third of emissions come from intensive livestock farming, with the rest coming from other activities such as rice farming and, more recently, orbital launches. But the real problem is that methane has a warming power more than 80 times greater than carbon dioxide according to a UN report. By partnering with Google, the Environmental Defense Fund wants to be able to precisely identify the origin of emitting leaks, in order to enable rapid and localized action.
“ By powering methane detection algorithms with Cloud Computing and applying AI to satellite imagery to identify oil and gas infrastructure around the world, our goal is to help EDF quantify and trace methane methane emissions all the way to their source. », Indicates Google in its publication.
To make this idea a reality, the EDF will very soon put the MethaneSat satellite into orbit, which will circle the Earth fifteen times every day at an altitude of 563.27 kilometers. This satellite will carry a detection AI, whose algorithms will have to follow the path taken by the emissions from a specific location and find the origin of the leaks or more generally of the emissions.
Accurate results publicly accessible
The combination of Google technologies should make it possible to create detailed maps, which will then be accessible on Google Earth and the partner NGO’s website. Researchers and different organizations will therefore be able to use the data, which is intended to be extremely precise.
If everything works correctly, the AI will detect signs, sidewalks or even road names from Maps data, and other algorithms will identify infrastructure such as wells, storage areas, or even pumps.
The satellite is scheduled to launch in early March, and it will be sent into near space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Public access to information and maps should begin at the end of the year. Google specifies that users will be able to use other accessible data sets to precisely study certain corners of the Globe.
Source : Google
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