<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>NASA scientists, using a tool designed to study how dust affects climate, have identified more than 50 spots around the world emitting major levels of methane, a development that could help combat the potent greenhouse gas.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed -- quickly."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NASA said its Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) is designed to foster understanding of the effects of airborne dust on climate.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But EMIT, which was installed on the International Space Station in July and can focus on areas as small as a soccer field, has also shown the ability to detect the presence of methane.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NASA said more than 50 "super-emitters" of methane gas in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the southwestern United States have been identified so far. Most of them are connected to the fossil-fuel, waste or agriculture sectors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kate Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate advisor, said EMIT's "additional methane-detecting capability offers a remarkable opportunity to measure and monitor greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">- '<b>Exceeds our expectations'</b> -</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the global rise in temperatures to date.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">While far less abundant in the atmosphere than CO2, it is about 28 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas on a century-long timescale. Over a 20-year time frame, it is 80 times more potent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Methane lingers in the atmosphere for only a decade, compared to hundreds or thousands of years for CO2.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This means a sharp reduction in emissions could shave several tenths of a degree Celsius off of projected global warming by mid-century, helping keep alive the Paris Agreement goal of capping Earth's average temperature increase to 1.5C, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"EMIT will potentially find hundreds of super-emitters - some of them previously spotted through air-, space-, or ground-based measurement, and others that were unknown," NASA said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Andrew Thorpe, a research technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory leading the EMIT methane effort, said some of the methane plumes detected by EMIT are among the largest ever seen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What we've found in a just a short time already exceeds our expectations," Thorpe said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NASA said a methane plume about two miles (3.3 kilometers) long was detected southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the Permian Basin, one of the largest oilfields in the world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It said 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure were identified in Turkmenistan, east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A methane plume at least three miles (4.8 kilometers) long was detected south of Tehran from a major waste-processing complex, NASA said. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>