Climate Change: Cattle Burp Methane Emissions Measured From Space for First Time
Cattle burping while chowing on feed in California’s San Joaquin Valley generated plumes of a powerful greenhouse gas that have been detected by satellites for the first time, shedding light on how agriculture may be contributing to climate change.
Methane emissions from the Bear 5 feedlot near Bakersfield ranged from 443 kilograms (977 pounds) to 668 kilograms per hour on Feb. 2, according to GHGSat Inc., which owns high-resolution satellites. If those emissions are sustained for a year, the cattle would release 5,116 tons of gas, enough to power 15,402 homes, the Montreal-based company said in a statement.
“This has not been done at an individual facility scale for the agriculture sector, as far as we know,” said Brody Wight, sales director at GHGSat. “The idea is that we need to measure first before you can take real positive action.”
Compared with energy and other pollution sources, the challenge with cattle is that their emissions are more diffuse and whipped about by the wind, making them difficult to track from ground meters, Wight said. The new findings were possible because of scientific advances in reading satellite images, he said.
Methane as a global-warming agent is more than 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere. A panel of United Nations-backed scientists warned in a report this month that global methane emissions must be reduced by a third by 2030 to help slow the planet’s warming.
Methane emissions are largely from human activity including agriculture, in which cattle are the biggest source globally.
In the U.S., agriculture accounted for about 11% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, with more than a quarter of that from cattle and other livestock,
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