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Greenhouse gas concentrations further increased in 2022, finds analysis of global satellite data

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From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

January 15, 2023 by oldbrew

What was the point of all those UN climate conferences again?
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Preliminary analyses of global satellite data by environmental researchers at the University of Bremen show that atmospheric concentrations of the two important greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) continued to rise sharply in 2022, reports Phys.org.

The increase in both gases is similar to that of previous years. However, the increase in methane does not reach the record levels of 2020 and 2021.

The Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP) at the University of Bremen is a world-leading institute in the field of evaluation and interpretation of global satellite measurements of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) and other atmospheric trace gases that are of great importance for climate and air quality.

The institute leads the GHG-CCI greenhouse gas project of the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative (ESA) and provides related data to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service C3S and the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service CAMS.

The latest Copernicus communication on greenhouse gases is based on satellite data and analysis provided by IUP.

“The methane increase remains very high in 2022 at about 0.6%, but below the record levels of the past two years. Our guess for this is that on the one hand there have been more emissions, but at the same time the atmospheric methane sink has decreased. At just over 0.5%, the CO2 increase is similar to that of previous years,” says environmental physicist Dr. Michael Buchwitz, summarizing the initial results.

Greenhouse gas measurements since 2002

Time series of greenhouse gas measurements from space begin in 2002 with the SCIAMACHY instrument on the European environmental satellite ENVISAT, proposed and scientifically leg by the University of Bremen. These measurements are currently being continued by Japanese (GOSAT and GOSAT-2) and American (OCO-2) satellites, among others.

The satellites measure the vertically averaged mixing ratio of CO2 and CH4.

Full report here.