NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 has compiled its first year of data and started quantifying the cycles of emission and absorption of the greenhouse gas.
By providing a measurement of all of the carbon being stored in Earth’s plants, maps like these help scientists figure out what happens to the carbon people release by burning fossil fuels.
This satellite image of the summit of Mauna Loa overlaid with contour lines helps illustrate why volcanic emissions from the summit rarely reach the observatory where atmospheric carbon dioxide is measured.