Massive Methane ‘Hotspot’ Confirmed in 4 Corners Region

From 2002 to 2012, European satellite data consistently showed a “hotspot” of methane being emitted in the U.S. Southwest, but the amount was so large that scientists thought it was a phantom discovery and didn’t rush to explore the area. “We didn’t focus on it because we weren’t sure if it was a true signal or an instrument error,” Christian Frankenberg from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said. The European Space Agency’s Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography consistently showed a bright red patch in the Four Corners region of the country, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. But eventually, Frankenberg and colleagues from NASA and the University of Michigan spent a year making measurements at ground level. Their findings validated satellite data from 2003-09 that showed concentrations of methane of about 1.3 million pounds of emissions per year, nearly 80 percent greater than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates. The Four Corners hotspot released 590,000 tons of methane emissions into the atmosphere every year from 2003 to 2009, on average. That’s the equivalent of almost 15 million tons of carbon dioxide, or adding 3.1 million cars to the road every year. The report says the source of the gas probably isn’t hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, because the data was gathered before the controversial practice became widespread. Rather, it says the methane probably is leaking from methane extraction from underground coal deposits...more