Ports, landfills, and industrial sites
Can you turn invisible emissions into profit?
Most of what a port, landfill, or industrial site emits is invisible to the human eye, but not to satellite sensors. Some emissions are fuel escaping, some now carry a carbon price, and more of them reach the public record every year. Seeing emissions tells you what to fix first, what you can recover, and how to answer those who ask.
Published 1 October 2026Updated 5 October 2026
Drag across the landfill below and six methane plumes appear, together about 5 metric tons of methane an hour, none of them visible to the eye. Further down, ten years of records at the same landfill show how much the published numbers change once each observation is checked.
Why it matters
Methane escaping a landfill or a gas site is fuel lost: captured, landfill gas generates electricity or is upgraded to renewable natural gas, and a leak found early is gas that can still be sold. Emissions from ships at berth now carry a price too, because European trading schemes charge for those emissions. A few large sources usually account for most of the methane a region emits: in a survey of California, a tenth of the methane sources seen from the air produced about 60% of the methane measured. Satellites and aircraft also image more sites every year, whether or not the operator asked. When someone else's data describes your site, a complete record of your own is what lets your numbers hold up.
This story visits
- 1Sylmar, Los Angeles34.33°N 118.52°W
- 2Falkirk, Scotland55.92°N 3.74°W
- 3Houston Ship Channel, Texas29.71°N 95.13°W
- 4Fos-sur-Mer port, France43.45°N 4.85°E
What satellites can see
Large sources are visible from orbit
Satellites that measure methane and carbon dioxide now pick out large emission sources from orbit. In these examples, published by Carbon Mapper, the true-color image shows an ordinary industrial landscape while the sensor shows the gas. Drag across each image to reveal the gas.
Where on Earth
- Falkirk, Scotland55.92°N 3.74°W
- Houston Ship Channel, Texas29.71°N 95.13°W
- Fos-sur-Mer port, France43.45°N 4.85°E
Case study: a landfill over ten years
Ten years of methane at one landfill
Taken at face value, the public record says methane at this landfill has risen six-fold since the flights of 2016 and 2017. Checked observation by observation, the rise is 2.5 to 5 times, and the landfill emits more than its published average. Aircraft first measured methane here in September 2016, during a statewide NASA survey, and aircraft and satellites have observed the landfill on 67 days since. Each frame below shows one of those observations over a cloud-free satellite image of the ground taken within 30 days, so you can see where the methane rises as the working landfill changes. The frame covers the same 2.8-kilometer square every year, and the bar beside it shows that year's average on a fixed scale.
Typical reading
3 October 2016Aircraft1,664 kg/h measured, 1 plumeGround image: 3 September to 2 November 2016That year's average
Measured on 6 days. The range allows for observations whose imagery could not be checked, and counts those that found no plume at zero or at the sensor's detection limit.
- Aircraft
- Satellite
- Yearly average
- Range from observations that could not be checked
Gray dots at zero are days with nothing above the detection limit, hollow where those observations could not be checked. Days above 4,000 kilograms an hour sit on the top line.
What checking the public record changed
- Average methane
- Before checking: 1,142 kg/hAfter checking: 1,330 to 1,470 kg/h
- Rise since the flights of 2016 and 2017
- Before checking: 6×After checking: 2.5 to 5×
Taken at face value, the public record overstates how fast this landfill's methane grew and understates how much methane the landfill emits.
- of methane released over ten years, at least. Over a century, that much methane warms the climate as much as about 2.8 to 3.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
- 104,000 to 113,500 t
Why every observation is checked
Some observations in the public list never saw the part of the landfill where the methane rises. Their recorded outline reaches the landfill, but the aircraft's imaging strip passed beside it. Of the 186 recorded observations, 28 could not have covered the area where the plumes rise and 19 covered only part of it. Most of these were flights in 2016 and 2017 that saw nothing. Counted in, those observations make the early years look cleaner than they were and the rise look six-fold, and they pull the published average for this landfill, 1,142 kilograms an hour, below the 1,330 to 1,470 found once they are set aside.
For ports, landfills, and industrial sites
What seeing emissions lets you do
Amelia Space Technologies combines satellite, aircraft, and ground observations of your site with your own records into one picture of what the site emits, where the emissions come from, and how they are changing. Four things follow from that picture.
Fix the largest sources first
Put repairs and investment where they pay back first: on the few large sources that usually produce most of the methane.
Recover what is escaping
Methane is fuel. Find leaks early, while the gas is still product you can sell, and capture landfill gas for electricity or renewable natural gas.
Cut what emissions cost you
Ships now pay for their emissions at berth in European ports. Evidence of when and where those emissions happen makes the case for shore power, cleaner operations, and the investment behind them.
Answer anyone with evidence
Regulators, auditors, investors, and neighbors can all read public data about your site. A record that shows what was measured, when, and what was not observed lets you answer each of them with confidence.
Work on your own site uses data licensed for commercial use: public missions such as Copernicus and NASA, commercial satellite providers, and your own sensors and records. The Carbon Mapper data in this article is used under its non-commercial terms.
See your site's record
If you operate a port, a landfill, or an industrial site, find out what the public record already says about your site, where the gaps are, and what closing those gaps would take.
Questions and answers
What does Amelia Space Technologies give a port or site operator?
A clear picture of what your site emits, which sources are largest, and how they are changing, built from satellite, aircraft, ground-sensor, and ship data and your own records. Every observation records what the instrument could and could not see, so the figures hold up with regulators, auditors, and carbon markets.
How do satellites and aircraft detect methane?
Satellites and aircraft carry imaging spectrometers that record sunlight reflected from the ground in hundreds of narrow wavelength bands. Methane absorbs light at characteristic wavelengths in the shortwave infrared, most strongly near 2,300 nanometers, so the light missing at those wavelengths maps the gas. The emission rate is then estimated from the mass of methane in the plume and the wind speed.
Can satellites see methane from ships?
Not yet at the sizes measured at berth. A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker unloading at berth was measured at 24 to 40 kilograms of methane an hour, while a typical summer satellite scene detects sources of about 500 to 1,400 kilograms an hour nine times out of ten, depending on latitude. Over water, satellite methane measurements also generally need sunglint, the bright reflection of the sun off the water toward the satellite, so emissions from ships at berth are measured on board and from the ground, and a combined record sets those measurements beside what satellites see.
Why can a published emissions average be too low?
An average counts every observation of a source, including observations that saw nothing. If a recorded observation never covered the source, for example an aircraft strip that passed beside the source, counting that observation as one that saw nothing lowers the average. At the landfill in this article, leaving out such observations raised the average from 1,142 to between 1,330 and 1,470 kilograms an hour.
Where does the data on this page come from?
Plume detections and emission rates come from Carbon Mapper, which publishes measurements from aircraft and satellites. The combined record, the coverage checks, and the calculations are Amelia's.
How much methane has the Sylmar landfill released since 2016?
At least 104,000 to 113,500 metric tons between September 2016 and July 2026, from published rates and assuming each year's average held between observations. Over a hundred years that much methane warms the climate as much as about 2.8 to 3.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Sixty plumes in the record have no published rate, so the true total is probably higher.
Sources
Emission rates are Carbon Mapper's published estimates. Some plumes in the record have no published rate, so the averages and totals on this page are lower bounds.
Plume detections and emission rates come from Carbon Mapper. Other figures come from a 2019 study in Nature of California's largest methane sources, Carbon Mapper's 2025 paper on how it measures plumes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on how strongly methane warms the climate, the Dutch research institute TNO and the International Council on Clean Transportation on methane from LNG ships at berth, the European Commission and the UK Government on emissions trading for shipping, a 2022 review by Jacob and colleagues of measuring methane from satellites, and the US Environmental Protection Agency on landfill gas.
Data by Carbon Mapper® (data.carbonmapper.org), used under Carbon Mapper's non-commercial Terms of Use. Figures derived from Carbon Mapper data, which are the landfill images, the time-lapse overlays and chart, and the four satellite plume images, are shared under the same non-commercial terms and attribution. Carbon Mapper is not affiliated with this analysis and has not reviewed it. Instrument data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Arizona State University; use of NASA data does not imply endorsement by NASA. Tanager-1 imagery © Planet Labs PBC. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016 to 2026. Text and analysis © 2026 Amelia Space Technologies, except the material credited above.
