New Features and Data Added to U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center Portal

A series of interactive stories, two national emissions datasets, and three regional urban test bed datasets for carbon dioxide and methane are the latest additions to the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center (U.S. GHG Center) portal. 

Currently in beta release, the U.S. GHG Center portal is a collaborative undertaking of NASA (lead implementing agency), NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

New Stories

Seven new interactive stories show how researchers are collecting greenhouse gas emission data in cities and metropolitan areas and using these data to advance modeling emission estimates at fine scales.

One new story, Satellite Data to Help Measure Impact of Los Angeles Climate Solutions, highlights how data acquired by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) on the International Space Station are being used to examine the effectiveness of efforts to reduce pollution in Los Angeles. Another story, Nationwide Dataset Connects Greenhouse Gases and Air Quality, describes how the GReenhouse gas And Air Pollutants Emissions System (GRA²PES), created by NOAA and NIST, provides monthly greenhouse gas emissions activity for multiple economic sectors to improve measurement and modeling for both greenhouse gases and air pollutants across the contiguous U.S.

New Data

The GRA²PES Greenhouse Gas and Air Quality Species is one of two urban-relevant national greenhouse gas datasets recently added to the portal. The other new dataset is Vulcan Fossil Fuel CO₂ Emissions, which represents total carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions resulting from the combustion of fossil fuel for the contiguous U.S. and the District of Columbia. The Vulcan Project, funded by NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), is an effort under the North American Carbon Program (NACP) to quantify North American fossil fuel CO₂ emissions at much finer scales than have been achieved in the past.

Three new datasets featuring ground-based urban measurements of atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ and methane also are available through the portal. The data are from three NIST-established test bed tower networks: the Indianapolis Flux Experiment (INFLUX), the Los Angeles Megacity Carbon Project (LAM), and the Northeast Corridor Urban Test Bed (NEC). NIST established the test beds to develop and evaluate the performance of advanced measurement capabilities for emissions independent of their origin.

Learn More

The U.S. GHG Center was established to consolidate information from observations and models to create a unified source for U.S. government and other datasets related to greenhouse gases. Along with their open availability through Earthdata Search, many NASA Earth science datasets related to greenhouse gases can be accessed through the portal.

Read more about the latest U.S. GHG Center news, events, and training opportunities.