Human activities add over 39 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into Earth’s atmosphere every year. If every living man, woman and child on the planet contributed equally to the problem, that would come out to five and a half tons of emitted CO₂ per person. But some carbon footprints are larger than others. On average, each person in the U.S. produces about 16 tons of CO₂ per year mostly by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

NASA’s new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) has the potential to be a game changer. The technology on OCO-2 is so sensitive that every day scientists will have 100 times more measurements than they presently do.

OCO-2 is scheduled to launch on July 1, 2014. Find out more about the science, spacecraft and instrument at Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2).

As always, I appreciate your comments.

Laura

OCO-2 is part of NASA's Earth Right Now campaign, a series of five Earth science missions that will be launched into space in the same year, opening new and improved remote eyes to monitor our changing planet.