- Aerosol optical depth attribution to industrial sources — Satellite sensors retrieve columnar aerosol loading daily over industrial clusters, but attributing persistent AOD anomalies to specific facilities requires multi-angle retrieval, wind-field analysis, and honest acknowledgement of what AOD alone cannot tell you about particle type.
- Carbon monoxide plume tracking from industrial fires and accidents — Satellite retrievals of tropospheric carbon monoxide can trace pollution plumes from industrial fires and accidents across national borders within 24–48 hours. This page explains which sensors do it, what they miss, and what an analyst can honestly deliver.
- XCO2 anomaly detection above fossil fuel facilities — Detecting CO2 plumes from power stations and industrial sites via satellite is possible but genuinely difficult: a 1,000 MW coal plant lifts the local column by perhaps 1–3 ppm against a 420 ppm background, demanding sub-ppm retrieval precision and careful error budgeting.
- Coal power plant activity inference from multi-signal fusion — No single satellite band confirms a coal plant's output. Combining TROPOMI NO2 columns, VIIRS thermal anomalies, and Sentinel-2 plume opacity builds a probabilistic activity index that is honest about its own gaps.
- Fugitive methane detection at municipal landfills — Municipal landfills are among the most variable methane sources on Earth, with emissions spiking episodically and mixing point-source leaks with diffuse surface flux. Satellite retrievals must overcome heterogeneous waste-surface emissivity before a plume rate means anything.
- Methane point-source attribution from orbit — Satellite spectrometers now detect discrete methane plumes from oil and gas infrastructure, landfills, and coal mines. Resolution and detection floors vary sharply between sensors, and choosing the wrong one produces false assurance.
- Mine tailings and acid rock drainage mapping from spectral data — Iron-sulphate and iron-hydroxide minerals produced by acid mine drainage carry diagnostic spectral signatures that satellite sensors can read from orbit. Hyperspectral instruments resolve individual mineral species; multispectral sensors map gross contamination zones. Neither replaces field sampling, but both catch what ground inspection misses.
- Traffic-related NO2 hotspot mapping in urban corridors — TROPOMI's tropospheric NO2 columns are too coarse to name a junction, but multi-year temporal averaging and land-use regression can push actionable hotspot maps below one kilometre. Here is what the method can and cannot promise.
- NO2 column mapping over industrial facilities — Tropospheric NO2 columns retrieved from TROPOMI and OMI can fingerprint persistent emission enhancements above named power stations, smelters, and industrial clusters. Multi-year composites resolve facility-level signals at 3.5 × 5.5 km, with honest caveats on cloud screening and air-mass factor uncertainty.
- Oil spill thickness and type estimation from optical sensors — SAR finds the spill; optical hyperspectral data tells you what kind of oil it is and, within limits, how thick. PRISMA and DESIS can separate crude, weathered oil, and water-in-oil emulsions that look identical in broadband imagery.
- Oil spill detection and extent mapping with SAR — Synthetic aperture radar detects surface oil by the backscatter suppression it causes on centimetre-scale ocean waves. Sentinel-1 is the operational standard, but false positives from biogenic films and wind shadows demand careful contextual analysis.
- Floating plastic and marine debris detection from orbit — Satellite sensors can detect dense floating debris aggregations using spectral indices derived from Sentinel-2 and hyperspectral data, but reliable discrimination from Sargassum, foam, and pumice at the pixel level remains an open research problem.
- Routine gas flaring volume quantification — Satellites detect gas flares by their infrared signature and convert radiant power to estimated gas volumes. The method is independent of operator self-reporting, works globally every night, and is honest about its uncertainty floor.
- NO2 and SO2 attribution to international shipping corridors — Tropospheric column retrievals from TROPOMI and OMI make shipping-lane pollution visible as persistent linear enhancements. Multi-month composites resolve major corridors and the 2020 IMO sulphur cap left a measurable SO2 signature in the satellite record.
- SO2 emissions monitoring at smelters and cement plants — UV backscatter satellites detect sulphur dioxide columns above smelters and cement kilns independently of any reported figure. TROPOMI resolves facility-scale plumes daily, and wind-field integration converts those columns into source-rate estimates regulators can act on.
- Illegal waste burning and field-fire detection via thermal anomaly — Mid-infrared brightness temperature exceedances betray unauthorised combustion events from orbit, but separating illegal waste fires from permitted agricultural burns demands land-cover context that spectral data alone cannot supply.