Global Methane hits 1802 ppb - Four Months Earlier Than 2013 and IASI Outage

On March 25, 12-24 hrs, the METOP/IASI global mean methane hit 1802 ppb at 586 mb. This same level of global mean methane was not hit until July 1st in 2013.

Factors that may impact the increased speed of reaching this level is the faster thaw in Siberia and higher methane levels over Antarctica.

Unfortunately, the METOP A IASI and METOP 2 both went down on or about March 26th. It seems there is a hardware issue with at least one satellite and it is not clear why the other is down as well.

"On 26 March 2014, at 08.40 UTC, the MHS instrument on Metop-A entered into a fault mode during preparations for the out-of-plane manoeuvre.

Attempts to recover the instrument have so far not been successful and the anomaly investigation is focusing on the possible failure of a hardware switch on the instrument. The instrument is to remain OFF until a better understanding of the problem allows further diagnostic commanding to be performed. This is not expected before mid-next week and the data service could remain off for considerably longer."

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/SPBULL/MSG0861744.01.txt

Also, the AIRS/Aqua NRT imagery is also down - seemingly indefinitely. See:

"*Details/Specifics of Change: *ESPC received an email from NASA

reporting that the AIRS Instrument has encountered an anomaly as of

March 22, 2014 17:27 UTC. AIRS NRT data will not be available until

further notice. We will let you know once the data is available.****:

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/SPBULL/MSG0820814.01.txt

It seems we are being left blind to tracking global atmospheric methane and CO2 by satellite at the moment we are proclaiming the need to do so!