Estimating Carbon Flux with Quantum Computing
This blog post originated in the 2017 Science Mission Directorate Technology Highlights Report (33 MB PDF). Technology Development A NASA-funded team has been exploring the use of quantum annealing computers for a scientifically meaningful application—to estimate the net annual ecosystem carbon flux over land using satellite data. Carbon flux is the exchange process of carbon dioxide (CO2) that takes place between growing or respiring vegetation and the atmosphere. This exchange process varies with season and latitude. The net global annual exchange of CO2 plays a significant role in removing an estimated 40% of the annual emission of all sources of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, scientists need to monitor and develop long-term accurate measures of this critical exchange budget to understand the Earth’s climate carbon cycle. In 2014, NASA successfully launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)—the first U.S. satellite that could directly measure global-scale surface CO2 data and Sun-induced fluorescence (a direct measure of plant...