Scientists from the United States, Japan, and China are racing to perfect satellite technology that could one day measure greenhouse gas emissions from space, potentially transforming the winner into the world's first climate cop.
Monitoring a single country's net emissions from above could not only become an important tool to establish whether it had met its promises to slow global warming, but also help emitters to pinpoint the sources of greenhouse gases more quickly and cheaply.
The melting of glaciers caused by the world's rising temperatures appears to be causing a slight slowing of the Earth's rotation in another illustration of the far-reaching impact of global climate change, scientists said on Friday.
The driving force behind the modest but discernible changes in the Earth's rotation measured by satellites and astronomical methods is a global sea level rise fuelled by an influx of meltwater into the oceans from glaciers, the researchers said.
