| A United Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft departs from Los Angeles International Airport on May 5, 2024. One of the company's planes will soon carry technology to monitor methane and other greenhouse gases during domestic flights. Source: Kevin Carter/Getty Images News via Getty Images. |
United Airlines Inc. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are teaming up to equip a commercial jet with technology that will detect methane and other greenhouse gas emission sources near large US urban areas.
The goal is to eventually build a large network of commercial aircraft that can continually monitor climate-warming emissions across the US and beyond.
The agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and United Airlines will be officially announced during a July 23 White House summit highlighting US domestic and global efforts to rein in climate-warming "super pollutants."
"This collaboration represents a significant leap forward in US efforts to monitor and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions," Sarah Kapnick, NOAA's chief scientist, said in a statement issued ahead of the official announcement. "If we can harness the capabilities of commercial aircraft, we will be poised to make rapid advancements in the understanding of greenhouse gas emissions that can inform policies."
Similar initiatives are underway in other nations. Japan Airlines has been sampling for CO2 with commercial jets for more than two decades. In 2023, Air Canada equipped one of its Airbus A330 aircraft with sensors to collect weather and air quality data.
NOAA and The Boeing Co. began testing on the aircraft that will be part of the greenhouse gas sampling system a few years ago. By certifying the instruments on a Boeing 737 — a jet used worldwide — NOAA hopes more nations will be able to use the technology to improve their climate data collection.
The agency already contracts with private pilots who collect airborne samples from 14 flight routes in the US. Scientists use the samples to track increases in greenhouse gas emissions, as NOAA does from the agency's 60 sampling sites worldwide. Satellites are also used to track large emission sources from space.
Commercial airlines, if added to the mix, could supercharge the work, officials said.
"We'll be collecting data over multiple cities multiple times a day, in different seasons, and under varying weather conditions," Colm Sweeney, head of NOAA's commercial aircraft program, said in a statement. "This will allow scientists to more accurately measure US emissions at sub-regional scales ... at just 1% of the cost of deploying research aircraft."
The monitoring equipment inside the fuselage of the Boeing aircraft, about the size of a microwave, will also improve NOAA's weather forecasts, officials said.