NASA Earth Observatory / Earth Science Division

This award recognises an integrated suite of Earth‑observing missions that have transformed carbon monitoring from a scientific aspiration into a public, operational reality. Throughout 2025, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory‑3 (OCO‑3) demonstrated for 54 global cities that satellite‑based CO₂ estimates match ground‑based inventories within 7% globally, while revealing systematic biases—overestimates in parts of Asia and underestimates in Africa—that only space‑based data can correct.

Meanwhile, OCO‑2 and OCO‑3 data powered a new World Bank dataset tracking emissions for 6,672 urban areas, the first open‑source resource of its kind. The EMIT imaging spectrometer identified over 50 methane super‑emitters, including plumes stretching more than 32 km from oil and gas facilities, proving that a dust‑mapping instrument can also pinpoint the largest methane leaks on the planet. And the GEDI mission’s space‑based LiDAR provided high‑resolution forest biomass data that underpins national carbon accounting for the UNFCCC global stocktake.

Behind these instruments, the NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) has turned raw satellite photons into actionable intelligence. In 2025 alone, CMS convened 129 participants, maintained 201 data products downloaded more than 400,000 times, and produced 740 peer‑reviewed publications cited over 68,000 times—63 of which appeared in Science, Nature or PNAS.

The Mid‑Atlantic Gas Emissions Quantification (MAGEQ) campaign flew six research aircraft for more than 400 hours, coordinating satellite, airborne and ground measurements to validate emissions estimates across urban, agricultural, wetland and coal‑mining regions. By delivering open, low‑latency data to governments, researchers and citizens, this integrated carbon‑monitoring enterprise has provided the foundational evidence layer that makes decarbonisation measurable, verifiable and accountable.

For turning space‑based science into the universal language of climate action, it receives this recognition.

Score: 90

Reference: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/sustainablecities/tracking-urban-emissions-from-space