ANA to use its planes to monitor the atmosphere

While most of the airlines-and-climate action is on testing new technologies nowadays, here’s an interesting joint initiative by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Japanese airline ANA, that makes use of airliners currently in use to further research into the causes of global warming.

ANA’s airliners will become platforms for remote sensing observation of atmospheric components in city areas.

To do this, ANA will embark a small piece of equipment the size of a carry-on luggage and fit it in the cabin next to one of the plane’s windows. This instrument, which has been developed by JAXA, observes the composition of the atmosphere when flying over urban areas. The data, for example, the concentration of gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, will complement and help validate similar measurements obtained from JAXA’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite "IBUKI" (GOSAT), which has been fulfilling this mission since 2009.

The issue with the satellite observations is that, apparently, they are less effective over cities, which happen to be precisely the main producers of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

The measuring instrument that ANA and JAXA will put in the airliners’ cabins allows for remote-sensing observation. It will be placed on a seat in the cabin where it will be able to read the concentration levels of different atmospheric components by measuring the wavelength of sunlight that comes in through the window .

This sounds like very high level, theoretical science, but, in practical terms, the idea here is that, by obtaining more accurate records of the atmosphere’s composition at different spots, it will be possible to better tailor policies to reduce the emissions of gases causing climate change.

ANA and JAXA have already been cooperating in a number of scientific projects, some of them, like the so-called “Avatar Technology” with a rather tenuous relation to the airline business, but quite futuristic nevertheless.