Greenhouse Gases
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the Earth's atmosphere trap heat and slow heat loss into space. Increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases, from burning fossil fuels, has caused cascading changes to many of Earth's vital life-supporting systems. Learn how federal data are being used to shed light on the sources and hotspots of GHG emissions and to understand the associated impacts on the climate.
INFO
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) refers to a suite of gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, found in Earth's atmosphere that naturally trap heat and maintain Earth's global temperature. However, human activities over the last century led to unprecedented amounts of GHGs being released into the atmosphere resulting in warming the planet at an alarming rate.
Earth's climate is changing at a pace that threatens human health, society and the natural environment. These changes include warmer air and ocean temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, retreating snow and ice, increasingly severe weather events, such as hurricanes of greater intensity and sea level rise, among other impacts. Federal agencies are working together to develop a Greenhouse Gas Monitoring and Information System (GHGMIS) for the U.S. to improve measurement of GHG emissions and sinks and track progress towards meet climate mitigation goals. This system uses these advanced capabilities, including the expanded use of GHG observational data and models, to provide enhanced GHG emissions and uptake data estimates that can be used by decision-makers.
The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index from 1979 to 2021, illustrating the cumulative contributions of different greenhouse gases to global warming. The stacked bar chart shows the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations over time, with each bar representing a year and the different colors indicating the contributions of specific gases: carbon dioxide (CO₂) in red, methane (CH₄) in purple, nitrous oxide (N₂O) in blue, and other gases in yellow. The accompanying donut chart on the right highlights the relative contributions of these gases to global warming, emphasizing the dominant role of CO₂, followed by CH₄, N₂O, and other gases.
NASA and Greenhouse Gases
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and one monitored via instruments on the ground, on airplanes, aboard satellites, and the International Space Station. Tracking methane, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases is crucial to monitoring our climate as it changes.
Related Data Visualizations
Methane Emissions in the United States
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. While emissions are substantially lower than for carbon dioxide, the biggest driver of climate change, methane is more efficient at trapping heat on a molecule by molecule basis. As a result, understanding the sources of methane and how they can be reduced, quickly, is a major effort of policymakers and environmental managers around the world.\r\n\r\nThis visualization presents gridded methane emissions across the United States for the year 2012. The gridded methane inventory is designed to be consistent with EPA\u2019s 2016 Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/us-greenhouse-gas-inventory-report-1990-2014) for the year 2012, which presents national totals for different source types. Gridded estimates with 0.1 degree spatial resolution are produced using a wide range of databases at the state, county, local, and point source level to allocate the spatial and temporal distribution of emissions for individual source types. Gridded inventories, developed with support from NASA\u2019s Carbon Monitoring System, help researchers use satellite, airborne, and in situ observations to independently evaluate EPA inventories and provide recommendations on refinements that may be needed. Additional detail and dataset access are available at the EPA website (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/gridded-2012-methane-emissions).\r\n\r\nThe gridded inventory presents totals for different major methane source types. Agriculture emissions in this visualization include manure management, enteric fermentation, rice cultivation, and field burning. Waste emissions include landfills, wastewater treatment, and composting. Natural Gas emissions include emissions from production, processing, and transmission. Coal emissions include both active and abandoned coal mines.\nVisualizations by: Mark SubbaRao, Scientific consulting by: Lesley Ott\nFor more information or to download this public domain video, go to https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5041
