BEIJING • China launched a satellite yesterday to monitor carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, state media said, making it the third country to track the potent contributor to global warming from space.
The TanSat probe will allow China to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, and give it a "louder voice" in future negotiations on carbon reduction, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The technology will "trace the sources of greenhouse gases and help evaluate whether countries are fulfilling their commitments", to reduce pollutants under environmental pacts, it said.
China is a signatory to the Paris climate change agreement, the first universal action plan for curbing global warming.
The United States and China account for a combined 40 per cent of the world's emissions, so their participation in the agreement is crucial to its success.
The launch comes after US President-elect Donald Trump, a climate change sceptic, reportedly threatened to gut Nasa's climate change monitoring programme.
China is the third country, after the US and Japan, to launch a CO2 monitoring satellite. The three- year mission, launched into space on a Long March 2D rocket, will take readings every 16 days.
"The TanSat has very good 'vision' and can distinguish changes in atmospheric CO2 as small as 1 per cent," Xinhua quoted the satellite's chief designer, Mr Yin Zengshan, as saying.
Mr Lin Chao, who was also involved in developing the technology, said it will allow China to "collect carbon data from all over the world, all year round, and record the carbon contributed by both developed and developing countries".
China is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases because of its heavy reliance on coal to provide electricity for its population of 1.37 billion.
It has been working fast to move away from coal - driven in large part by major air pollution concerns, including a crisis this month that has choked large swathes of the country.
After growing 5.3 per cent a year for the period 2005-14, China saw a decline of 0.7 per cent last year and is set to post a 0.5 per cent drop for this year.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
