What Is Our Carbon Footprint?

Background:

Carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are an important input to the global radiation budget, which strongly impacts the past, present, and future climate. These gases are exchanged between the atmosphere, ocean (through dissolution of carbon gases), and plants (through photosynthesis and respiration). They are also emitted by human activities, such as burning of fossil fuels, clearing land for agricultural purposes, producing and consuming food, manufacturing goods, materials, buildings, and roads, and by the transportation sector.

The amount of GHGs released into the atmosphere by any particular human activity is known as the carbon footprint. This footprint can be defined across an individual, a family, an organization or group, or an entire nation. It is usually measured as tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted per year, a number that can be supplemented by tons of CO2-equivalent gases, including methane (CH4) and other greenhouse gases. The global human footprint is well known from measurements at remote sites, but local-to-national carbon footprints are much more uncertain due to inadequate knowledge and lack of data "on the ground" about the complex interactions between contributing processes and sectors.

A number of satellites now observe CO2 and CH4, with more platforms on the way in the future. Local sources of GHGs, such as power plants, natural gas operations, and large deforestation and burning events are detectable using GHG data from satellites. Recent studies have quantified the emissions from a limited number of these sources, but these case studies have not yet been generalized into a common framework. There are many more sources that can be studied, as each source has its own unique signature.

Your challenge is to 1) identify local sources of GHGs, like power plants, traffic, fires, deforestation events, and oil/gas extraction and processing activities, 2) quantify the carbon footprints of these local-to-national activities, and 3) make the public aware of its carbon footprint. Could your project help the world to better understand the footprint of humans on our Earth system, identify climate trends, and/or develop and test Earth system models that predict future change? Can you help policy makers to assess the effectiveness of decarbonization policy and action, validate national emissions inventories, and/or track progress towards meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments?

Potential Considerations:

• You may decide to create visualizations or interactive applications to calculate the carbon footprint of an emission source(s). Are there features in your visualization to keep it as interactive and user-friendly as possible, while still effectively presenting an educational message about the carbon footprint of various human activities?
• You may (but are not required to) provide cues for visualization and documentation about data quality and the logic behind your carbon footprint calculator.
• You may provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) so people can combine your data with other data.
• You must use data from space agencies. You can also data from ground stations and other sensors, if available. You may additionally use emission data from national or global inventories.
• How can you allow integration of research and new data streams— or geospatial data from various sources— to provide innovative services to the public?
• Satellite data can have flaws that should be taken into account, so you should not trust any single measurement. How can you enhance the public’s understanding of what satellite data mean and the differences in data quality from different sources?
• Projects that combine optical imagery (e.g., Landsat visible images, MODIS) together with trace gas measurements (e.g., OCO-2/3, GOSAT/-2, TROPOMI) will be the most useful. Projects that combine information from multiple datasets together will be more informative than projects that focus on a single dataset.
• To be most helpful to scientists and policy makers, emissions estimates should include how much a user should trust them (i.e., the uncertainty associated with the estimate).
• How can the information your project provides be used by both the scientific and the policy communities to better understand the footprint of humans on our Earth system, and potentially reduce further contributions to climate change?

For data and resources related to this challenge, refer to the Resources tab at the top of the page.

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