A team has found via testing from airplanes that landfill work faces tend to be responsible for the biggest share of methane emissions in U.S. landfills. Their findings are published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The researchers are from Carbon Mapper, a California nonprofit dedicated to finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Arizona State University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The primary gas causing climate change is carbon dioxide. This is due mainly to the sheer volume of the gas being pumped into the atmosphere. Methane actually insulates more heat than carbon dioxide but has received less attention due to lower overall emissions. Still, environmentalists have been growing more concerned about the gas as more sources of it have been found in recent years.
In this new effort, the research team focused their efforts on methane emissions from landfills. Landfills tend to release methane through the decay of plant-based material, usually discarded food waste. To learn more about methane released from landfills, the researchers chartered planes and flew as low as possible over 217 landfills in 17 states, using air-quality measuring devices. They found measurable amounts of the gas from half of them.
The research team found a surprising source—most of the emissions they detected were coming from so-called work faces—the parts of a landfill where fresh waste is dumped. Very little came from other parts of the landfills.
The researchers also found most of the landfills using gas-capturing technology were still emitting measurable amounts of the gas into the air. This, they suggest, is because these landfills are usually the largest and therefore emit the most methane. Despite efforts to capture it, substantial quantities are emitted into the atmosphere. The team was also surprised by the high number of landfills that were not emitting any measurable amounts of methane at all.
More information:
Tia R. Scarpelli et al, Investigating Major Sources of Methane Emissions at US Landfills, Environmental Science & Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c07572
© 2024 Science X Network
Citation:
Airborne observations identify major source of US landfill methane emissions (2024, December 14)
retrieved 14 December 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-12-airborne-major-source-landfill-methane.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
