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  • Presentation | A32B: Constraining Greenhouse Gas Exchange Processes Using Remote Sensing and In Situ Observations I Oral
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  • A32B-09: Relating Multi-Scale Plume Detection and Area Estimates of Methane Emissions
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Author(s):
Sudhanshu Pandey, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (First Author, Presenting Author)
John Worden, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Daniel Cusworth, Carbon Mapper
Daniel Varon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Daniel Jacob, Harvard University
Matthew Thill, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Kevin W. Bowman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology


There are two main ways to measure how much methane is leaking into the air:




  1. Zoomed-in “plume” measurements that spot individual leaks coming from wells, tanks, or pipelines.




  2. Zoomed-out “area-scale” measurements that look at the total methane coming from an entire region.




Because these two methods work at different scales and use different instruments, it’s hard to combine their results. In this study, we built a simple mathematical “bridge” that lets the small-scale plume data improve the area-scale estimates.


We tested the idea in the Permian Basin, a major U.S. oil-and-gas field. Weekly sums of plume-based leaks matched very closely with regional totals calculated from the TROPOMI satellite data. When we used the plume data to adjust an older inventory of leaks, the updated numbers lined up with the satellite results.


Bottom line: if we collect enough high-quality plume observations, we can make our big-picture methane estimates far more accurate.




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