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Scenarios of future annual carbon footprints of astronomical research infrastructures

Nature Astronomy (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Research infrastructures have been identified as an important source of greenhouse gas emissions of astronomical research. Based on a comprehensive inventory of 1,211 ground-based observatories and space missions, we assessed the evolution of the number of astronomical facilities and their carbon footprint from 1945 to 2022. We found that space missions dominate greenhouse gas emissions in astronomy, showing an important peak at the end of the 1960s, followed by a decrease that has turned again into a rise over the last decade. Extrapolating past trends, we predict that greenhouse gas emissions from astronomical facilities will experience no strong decline in the future, and may even rise substantially, unless research practices are changed. We demonstrate that a continuing growth in the number of operating astronomical facilities is not environmentally sustainable. These findings should motivate the astronomical community to reflect about the necessary evolutions that would put astronomical research on a sustainable path.

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Fig. 1: Evolution of the number of astronomical facilities and their carbon footprints since 1945.
Fig. 2: Modelling of the future annual carbon footprints of astronomical facilities.
Fig. 3: Future annual carbon footprints for five illustrative scenarios.

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Data availability

All data used for this work are available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/12568160 (ref. 44).

Code availability

All code used for this work is available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/12568160 (ref. 44).

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Acknowledgements

This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services (ADS). We thank K. Lockhart for her help with using that service. We further thank D. Barret for useful discussions. This work has also benefited from discussions within the research group and cross-disciplinary collective Labos 1point5, and within the grassroots movement Astronomers for Planet Earth. We thank all members for their engagement and support. This work has made use of the Python 2D plotting library matplotlib45.

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  1. Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, CNES, UPS, Toulouse, France

    Jürgen Knödlseder, Mickael Coriat, Philippe Garnier & Annie Hughes

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  1. Jürgen Knödlseder
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Contributions

J.K. developed the method, gathered and analysed the data and drafted the paper. P.G. helped with the collection of some data. All authors contributed to the definition of the analysis method, the elaboration of the discussion section and the review of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jürgen Knödlseder.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Alison Farmer, Joshua Kace and Andrew Wilson for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–14, Tables 1–3 and Discussion.

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Knödlseder, J., Coriat, M., Garnier, P. et al. Scenarios of future annual carbon footprints of astronomical research infrastructures. Nat Astron (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02346-0

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