According to the findings of a recent research, landfills are responsible for the emission of a sizeable quantity of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere during the process of garbage decomposition.
When researchers analysed satellite data from four major cities across the globe — Delhi and Mumbai in India, Lahore in Pakistan, and Buenos Aires in Argentina — they discovered that city-level emissions in 2018 and 2019 were between 1.4 and 2.6 times higher than prior projections.
The research, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, is intended to assist local governments in carrying out focused initiatives to reduce global warming by identifying certain locations that are of significant concern.
Methane is released into the atmosphere whenever organic waste such as food, wood, or paper undergoes the decomposition process.
After oil and gas systems and agricultural practises, landfills have emerged as the world’s third-biggest contributor to global methane emissions.
Even while methane only accounts for roughly 11% of greenhouse gas emissions and remains in the atmosphere for about a dozen years on average, it is able to retain 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide does.
According to estimates provided by scientists, human activities are responsible for at least 25 percent of the current warming trend.
According to Joannes Maasakkers, the principal author of the research and an atmospheric scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, “this is the first time that high-resolution satellite photos have been used to view landfills and compute their methane emissions.”
He said, “We discovered that these landfills, which are very tiny in comparison to the sizes of cities, are responsible for a high proportion of the overall emissions from a specific location.”
Even though using satellite data to identify emissions is still a relatively young subject, it is being increasingly used in order to monitor pollutants all over the globe.
It means more independent groups are measuring greenhouse gases and identifying major emitters, when before local government statistics were the only source accessible.
“This new work shows just how important it is to manage landfills better, especially in countries like India where landfills are often on fire, emitting a wide range of damaging pollutants,” said Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London who was not a part of the study.
“This new work shows just how important it is to manage landfills better, especially in countries like India where landfills are often on fire,”
Earlier in the year, a vast dump in India took fire, causing the city of New Delhi to be shrouded in thick smoke for several days.
At the same time, the rest of the nation was suffering in an extraordinary heat wave with temperatures that exceeded 122 degrees Celsius.
There have been reports of at least two further fires in landfills in India so far in 2018.
Nisbet stated that academics will have an easier time determining “who is contaminating the planet” as a result of the increased use of more recent satellite technologies in conjunction with data taken on the ground.
According to the findings of a recent study conducted by the International Energy Agency (IEA), China and India account for the majority of the world’s methane emissions.
At the United Nations climate summit held the previous year, 104 nations made a promise to cut their methane emissions by thirty percent by the year 2030 compared to levels in 2020.
The countries of India and China have chosen not to sign the document.
In further investigations, the authors want to conduct more study into dump sites located in other parts of the globe.
According to Maasakkers, “it is a rapidly emerging topic and we anticipate more fascinating data to come out in the near future.”