EO in Orbit: Scientific webinars – Satellites of interest to Canada

Presentation 1 (in English)

From 11:00 to 11:30 a.m.

Eric Choi
Director, Business Development, GHGSat

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with 80 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after release. A quarter of today's global temperature increases are caused by anthropogenic methane. Reducing methane emissions 45% by 2025 would have the same 20-year climate benefit as closing 1,300 coal-fired power plants.

Canadian space technology is addressing the growing need for global transparency in methane emissions. A number of past (e.g. SCIAMACHY) and current (e.g. Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI) space agency missions provide methane data on regional and global scales. An exciting development is the operational availability in Canada and abroad of commercial remote sensing companies like GHGSat that are pushing the boundaries with innovative and complementary EO capabilities that would otherwise not be possible with either a space agency or a private sector mission alone.

GHGSat's satellites enable the quantification of facility-level methane emissions and provide data and analytics for stakeholders in the energy, resource, power generation, agricultural, waste management, and sustainability sectors to make informed environmental decisions. GHGSat currently has 12 satellites in space, with additional satellites scheduled for launch within a year. No other government or commercial satellite mission is currently capable of quantifying methane emissions from point sources as small as individual oil and gas wells.

This presentation will include a short history of satellite-based methane monitoring, a summary of GHGSat's satellites and their capabilities, a description of how GHGSat's high-resolution satellites work synergistically with regional-scale data from space agency missions, and conclude with examples of recent observations from GHGSat's satellites.

Presentation 2 (in French)

From 11:30 a.m. to noon

• Yves Crevier – Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
• Roger de Abreu – Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)

NISAR is a joint EO mission of NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission to operate in the L- and S- bands that will provide a 12-day revisit coverage of almost all of Canada (up to 78°N) at a 6-metre spatial resolution. NISAR is schedule to launch by fall 2024.

The complementarity between C-band (e.g. RADARSAT Constellation Mission, Sentinel-1) and L-band makes NISAR a mission of high interest to Canada. The distinct interactions of these two frequency bands with Earth's surface will enhance information across various applications related to forests, terrain movements and soil moisture.

The presentation will outline the opportunities for Canada and the process undertaken by the CSA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and NRCan to investigate the interest of potential Canadian users of NISAR, to assess their level of preparedness, and their access requirements to NISAR data.