3 ms·

That link isn't working for me, but I think this is the same article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-10/methane-plume-seen-by-satellite-over-al

• ra 5y ago
  "An emissions rate of about 58 tons of methane per hour would have been required to generate the plume, according to an estimate from Kayrros SAS, which analyzed European Space Agency data." That sounds like a lot!
  • bbulkow 5y ago
    Maybe hard for surveillance though? A single railcar of liquid is 100 tons (I don't know if liquid methane is shipped, this is just a way to visualize - and this is a rough number. Methane is about 12 pct lighter than water.) I wonder what the most likely reasons are. I might think a fracking based earthquake opening up an underground reservoir that feeds into a mine? But that is very speculative! I am assuming there are no chemical plants in the area.
    • MisterTea 5y ago
      > I wonder what the most likely reasons are. Per the article you didn't read: "The Oct. 22 release was detected by satellite and pinpointed to an area in Marion County near natural gas wells in the Black Warrior Basin, a pair of gas pipelines and coal mines, some dating back to the late 1800s."
  • wolfram74 5y ago
    For context [0] says global annual methane generation is ~570E6 tons, which puts hourly production at 570E6/(24*365)~=65000 or over a thousand times this source. Like, not /great/ definitely want to address. But unless it's a symptom of a new mechanism I don't know if I should be super alarmed. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2020
    • zardo 5y ago
      1,000th of the worlds total methane emissions is pretty enormous