How satellites and AI can help check the pulse of our warming planet

Swiss and international experts are banking on a growing constellation of satellites and artificial intelligence models to give more accurate insights into greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They say faster, more detailed data would strengthen countries’ emission reduction efforts. Under the Paris climate agreement, states must regularly report estimates of how much GHG they emit or remove. These are calculated from data on activities such as transport, industry, heating and energy production, and based on internationally agreed guidelines from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this long, resource-intensive reporting process is full of uncertainties. Gerrit Kuhlmann, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials and Technology (Empa), is convinced that satellite-based Earth observations and developments in AI can help nations better assess and verify the scale of their emissions. “AI can process a lot of information about what the specific GHG ...