The use of spectral remote sensing for detecting and monitoring gaseous emission from active coal fires

Over the time-scale, earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration has varied and that is mostly determined by balance among the geochemical processes including burial of organic carbon in sediments, silicate rock weathering and volcanic activity. However, the present CO2 concentration of earth's atmosphere has exceeded far that it was predicted from the Vostok ice core data. Other than rapid industrialization and urbanization since last century, geo-natural hazards such as volcanic activity, leakage from hydrocarbon reservoirs and spontaneous combustion of coal contribute a considerable amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. Spontaneous combustion of coal is common occurrence in most coal producing countries and CO2 emission from these coalfires are one of the most alarming factor because of high quantity. Remote sensing of coalfires has achieved a standard; however, quantification of CO2 emission from coalfires using remote sensing has not endeavoured due to few limitations. The present study has first identified the most susceptible CO2 bands (in compare to present hyperspectral sensors) using radiative transfer models and later used those bands to quantify CO2 emission from coalfires. Two methods (band ratioing and radiative transport) were used in the present study and it was observed that the first method is fast and second method is source specific for atmospheric CO2 retrieval