The Aliso Canyon gas storage facility near Porter Ranch, California, produced a large accidental CH4 release from October 2015 to February 2016. The Hyperion imaging spectrometer on board the EO‐1 satellite successfully detected this event, achieving the first orbital attribution of CH4 to a single anthropogenic superemitter. Hyperion measured shortwave infrared signatures of CH4 near 2.3 μm at 0.01 μm spectral resolution and 30 m spatial resolution. It detected the plume on three overpasses, mapping its magnitude and morphology. These orbital observations were consistent with measurements by airborne instruments. We evaluate Hyperion instrument performance, draw implications for future orbital instruments, and extrapolate the potential for a global survey of CH4 superemitters.
For the most part, satellite observations of climate are not presently sufficiently accurate to establish a climate record that is indisputable and hence capable of determining whether and at what rate the climate is changing. Furthermore, they are insufficient for establishing a baseline for testing long‐term trend predictions of climate models. Satellite observations do provide a clear picture of the relatively large signals associated with interannual climate variations such as El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and they have also been used to diagnose gross inadequacies of climate models, such as their cloud generation schemes. However, satellite contributions to measuring long‐term change have been limited and, at times, controversial, as in the case of differing atmospheric temperature trends derived from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) microwave radiometers.
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