America's Methane Mystery: NASA Set To Investigate Hotspot Over the 4 Corners

schwit writes A "hot spot" of the largest concentration of methane seen over the United States is in the area near the Four Corners intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah and covers 2,500 square miles. The hotspot predates widespread fracking in the area. Researchers from several institutions are now in the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest with a suite of airborne and ground-based instruments, aiming to uncover reasons for a mysterious methane "hot spot" detected from space. "With all the ground-based and airborne resources that the different groups are bringing to the region, we have the unique chance to unequivocally solve the Four Corners mystery," said Christian Frankenberg, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who is heading NASA's part of the effort.

Comments

Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help myself. I've had this overwhelming desire to fart in four states for decades now. It's even worse now with the munchies.

No mystery at all

[ralphsiegler]

Coal bed methane, that is in the cracks and pores of coals, is old, old and well known thing. That's why the "canary in the coal mine", why miners die in explosions, etc. *yawn*

Re:No mystery at all

[Layzej]

Coal bed methane, that is in the cracks and pores of coals, is old, old and well known thing.

Yeah. It's even mentioned in TFA:

This indicates the methane emissions should not be attributed to fracking but instead to leaks in natural gas production and processing equipment in New Mexico's San Juan Basin, which is the most active coalbed methane production area in the country.

'The results are indicative that emissions from established fossil fuel harvesting techniques are greater than inventoried,' Kort said.

Re:No mystery at all

[tomhath]

What you say is true. But the mystery is why this location has so much more methane than other coal regions. It could be that there's just much more gas escaping from the coal fields than anywhere else; we'll see.

Re:No mystery at all

[ralphsiegler]

Not a matter of coal mining, but rather some fields make a huge of amount of methane so collection facilities are located there. This region is the largest producing commercial coalbed methane one in the nation. Thus no mystery and no surprise, it's like someone suddenly decided they needed funding for a study and are harping on something I knew 30+ years ago.

Re:No mystery at all

[ralphsiegler]

look it up, they were for both methane and CO detection. They were used in UK until 1987!

Why the bad rap?

[Deadstick]

Methane is neither the principal part of a fart nor the smelly part. It's odorless. In fact, it's one of three odorless gases which make up roughly 98% of flatulence, with nitrogen and CO2.

The other 2% is a widely varied mix of esters, sulfides and ketones that depends on what you eat, and that's what provides the inimitable social character.

The "natural gas" that your stove burns is methane, and your gas company deliberately adds a stinky substance to it so you'll know when you have a leak.

Re:Why the bad rap?

[Michael Woodhams]

Because methane is a very potent greenhouse gas.

I'm not sure why you bring flatulence into the discussion at all.

Besides, there is a scientific mystery, so scientists want to solve it, independently of how good methane's rap is.

Re:No relation to fracking is what the big media

[xdor]

The natural gas industry spends billions of dollars to capture methane for sale and combustion.

This methane plume represents millions of dollars lost (possibly billions since its so large) -- if NASA can locate the source, I'm sure more than one oil & gas company would be more than happy to keep all that money from blowing away with the wind.