TOKYO — Japan on Friday launched the first satellite to monitor greenhouse gases worldwide, a tool to help scientists better judge where global warming emissions are coming from and how much is being absorbed by the oceans and forests.
The orbiter, together with a similar U.S. satellite to be launched next month, will represent an enormous leap in available data on carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, now drawn from scattered ground stations.
“I’m saying Christmas is here,” said an enthusiastic Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now we get about 100 observations every two weeks. With the satellite we’ll get a million.”
The satellite, named “Ibuki,” which means “breath,” was sent into orbit along with seven other piggyback probes on a Japanese H2A rocket. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, said the launch was a success, and officials said they were monitoring the satellites to ensure they entered orbit properly.
Ibuki, which will circle the globe every 100 minutes, is equipped with optical sensors that measure reflected light from the Earth to determine the density of the two gases.
Carbon dioxide, the biggest contributor to global warming, is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, motor vehicles and other sources. Methane has a variety of sources, including livestock manure and rice cultivation.
Scientists currently depend on 282 land-based stations — and scattered instrumented aircraft flights — to monitor carbon dioxide at low altitudes. Ibuki, orbiting at an altitude of about 415 miles, will be able to check gas levels in entire columns of atmosphere at 56,000 locations.
The upcoming NASA satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, will have more precise measurements because it will check only one gas, carbon dioxide, said David Crisp, that project’s chief scientist.
Its smaller observational target area will mean less chance of clouds contaminating sample results.
Having two satellites will allow researchers to double-check results, Crisp said.
The launch of the piggyback satellites, from Tanegashima, a remote island about 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, was seen as crucial to Japan’s efforts to demonstrate that its domestically developed H2A rocket can compete in the global commercial launching business.
Earlier this month, Japan got its first commercial order, from South Korea, to launch a satellite on an H2A. Liftoff is scheduled after April 2011.
