CO2 capture and storage monitoring based on remote sensing techniques: A review

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has been causing harmful effects to the environment and even to the whole earth. Nowadays, it is the leading cause of global warming and the greenhouse effect that poses a serious threat to the welfare of the planet earth and its inhabitant plants, animals, and humans alike. After years of theoretical demonstration and field tests, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been proven to be an effective approach to reduce atmospheric CO2 and has made an important contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The monitoring of storage site leakage is an important link to ensure the effective implementation of the project such as injection of CO2 into deep Earth to drive the oil and gas to shallow depth of Earth for increasing the oil/gas productions and meanwhile to protect the surrounding environment and personnel from the harmful effects of CO2 leakage. As a new leakage monitoring method, remote sensing has been successfully applied in many storage sites with its advantages of extensive scope of observations, non-contact and long-term cost-effective monitoring. In this study, various remote sensing monitoring technologies are summarized and discussed in terms of their advantages and disadvantages in applications, their development trend in the future, and promising remote sensing monitoring system for the safety of different CO2 injection stages.