News
New tools for climate monitoring
4 Oct 2022
Equipped with novel instruments, research flights over Canada are furnishing data about the emission of greenhouse gases. LMU physicists are playing a major role in the surveys.
Coal mining, oil and gas production, landfills, agriculture – all these things are anthropogenic sources of methane (CH4), the greenhouse gas which is the second-strongest driver of climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2). In fact, a molecule of methane is up to 86 times stronger in its climate impacts than a molecule of CO2. Moreover, large wetlands and thawing permafrost are among the most important but least well understood natural sources and sinks in the global CH4 and CO2 budget. Finding out more precisely how much these sources emit individually and how analyses can better distinguish what is of natural origin and what is man-made is the mission of the German research aircraft HALO currently flying over Canada.