A NASA satellite just detected some new 39 major sources of toxic emissions derived from sulfur dioxide, which are also all unreported and man made.

Sulfur dioxide or SO2 is considered as a serious health threat that is also responsible for producing acid rain. Apart from this, this is also the one in six pollutants that are constantly regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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This new satellite-based technique from NASA's Aura spacecraft enabled scientists to locate new sources of man made carbon emissions. According to atmospheric scientist and lead author of the study, Chris McLinden from the Climate Change Canada in Toronto, these new satellite images reveal sulfur dioxide activities that appear as "hotspots", which helped in estimating emissions with more accuracy.

These new findings now provide new SO2 emission sources that are not based on current methods. Today, an analysis of emission records is required in monitoring SO2 activities where data collected are obtained from ground measurements and fuel usage.

In order to create accurate and complete SO2 emissions records, industries and governments must be able to identify the exact locations of these man made carbon emissions.

In this new study, scientists from NASA and the University of Maryland along with Dalhousie University and the Climate Change in Canada have analyzed the satellite data that was collected between 2005 to 2014.
The results revealed that those 39 unreported SO2 emissions are found in concentrations mainly among power plants and coal plants including gas and oil industries. These locations are found in Mexico, the Middle East and several parts of Russia.

These unreported SO2 sources also make up a total of 12 percent of the the entire SO2 emissions that are man made. This new study is published in the journal, Nature Geoscience.

TagsNASA, sulfur dioxide pollutants, man made carbon emissions, Carbon emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions