NASA’s crystal-clear ‘ODIAC’ visualizes human-made CO2 emissions

New technology at the NASA space organization allows us to see in great detail where in the world CO2 is released and how the substance moves across the Earth. NASA’s animation lets us watch how carbon dioxide moves through the Earth’s atmosphere, driven by wind patterns and atmospheric circulation.

Because of the model’s high resolution, you can zoom in and see carbon dioxide emissions rising from power plants, fires, and cities, then spreading across continents and oceans. This crystal-clear technology offers opportunities for future climate negotiations.

Red and brown colors

The US Space Agency’s map shows where carbon dioxide (CO2), indicated in red and brown colors, is released and moves across the Earth. With the help of thousands of data points, mainly satellites that can monitor CO2, scientists have managed to map this in great detail. According to NASA, the animation is five hundred times more precise than a regular climate model.

Over China, the United States, and South Asia, most emissions came from power plants, industrial facilities, and cars and trucks. In Africa and South America, emissions largely stemmed from fires, especially those related to land management, controlled agricultural burns, deforestation, and oil and coal burning. Fires release carbon dioxide as they burn.

Night and day

In the case of the Amazon and the jungles in Central Africa, it is clear how CO2 falls during the day and rises again at night. Every night, the sky turns red in the animation when nature releases carbon dioxide. When CO2 is absorbed during the day, the red color disappears again. During the day, plants absorb CO2 and release it at night. The day and night cycle makes the map look like it’s pulsing.

Plants take up carbon dioxide during the day as they photosynthesize and then release it at night through respiration. Notice that much pulsing occurred in regions with many trees, like mid- or high-latitude forests.

Fair agreements

The animation also makes it clear, once again, that emissions do not stop at borders. In the case of the United States, carbon emissions can be seen moving across the Atlantic Ocean with a westerly wind. The carbon dioxide emitted from Europe and China also blows in all directions.

The ‘moving map’ enables scientists to monitor very accurately, based on data, who emits how much and where. This way, countries or companies can be held accountable if they do not achieve climate goals. It will also help to make fair agreements.

Global warming

“We can’t tackle climate change without confronting the fact that we’re emitting massive amounts of CO2, and it’s warming the atmosphere,” explains climate scientist Lesley Ott at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas and the primary reason for Earth’s rising temperatures. As CO2 builds in the atmosphere, it warms our planet. All this carbon dioxide isn’t harmful to air quality. We need some carbon dioxide to warm the planet enough for life to exist. But when too much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere, the Earth warms too much and too fast. That’s what has been happening for at least the past half-century.”

Extreme weather conditions

Human activities have “unequivocally caused warming”, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. This warming is leading to all sorts of changes to our climate, including more intense storms, wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels.

The ODIAC (Open-source Data Inventory for Anthropogenic CO2), the map of human-made carbon dioxide emissions, was originally designed and developed under the Greenhouse Gas Observing SATellite (GOSAT) project at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES). Since then, ODIAC has been maintained at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) in collaboration with NASA, NIES, and Appalachian State University.