Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico

Irakulis-Loitxate, Itziar; Gorroño, Javier; Zavala-Araiza, Daniel; Guanter, Luis

doi:10.1021/acs.estlett.2c00225

Cited by 38 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…Potentially large methane sources over water include offshore oil and gas facilities, wastewater facilities, hydroelectric and agricultural reservoirs, and estuaries. They can be observed in the sunglint mode or by lidar (Kiemle et al, 2017;Irakulis-Loitxate et al, 2022b). The wet tropics and the Arctic are a challenge because of persistent cloudiness, compounded in the Arctic by high solar zenith angles and polar darkness and by the collocation of oil and gas emissions with wetland emissions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources using satellite observations of atmospheric methane

et al. 2022

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Abstract. We review the capability of current and scheduled satellite observations of atmospheric methane in the shortwave infrared (SWIR) to quantify methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources. We cover retrieval methods, precision and accuracy requirements, inverse and mass balance methods for inferring emissions, source detection thresholds, and observing system completeness. We classify satellite instruments as area flux mappers and point source imagers, with complementary attributes. Area flux mappers are high-precision (<1 %) instruments with 0.1–10 km pixel size designed to quantify total methane emissions on regional to global scales. Point source imagers are fine-pixel (<60 m) instruments designed to quantify individual point sources by imaging of the plumes. Current area flux mappers include GOSAT (2009–present), which provides a high-quality record for interpretation of long-term methane trends, and TROPOMI (2018–present), which provides global continuous daily mapping to quantify emissions on regional scales. These instruments already provide a powerful resource to quantify national methane emissions in support of the Paris Agreement. Current point source imagers include the GHGSat constellation and several hyperspectral and multispectral land imaging sensors (PRISMA, Sentinel-2, Landsat-8/9, WorldView-3), with detection thresholds in the 100–10 000 kg h−1 range that enable monitoring of large point sources. Future area flux mappers, including MethaneSAT, GOSAT-GW, Sentinel-5, GeoCarb, and CO2M, will increase the capability to quantify emissions at high resolution, and the MERLIN lidar will improve observation of the Arctic. The averaging times required by area flux mappers to quantify regional emissions depend on pixel size, retrieval precision, observation density, fraction of successful retrievals, and return times in a way that varies with the spatial resolution desired. A similar interplay applies to point source imagers between detection threshold, spatial coverage, and return time, defining an observing system completeness. Expanding constellations of point source imagers including GHGSat and Carbon Mapper over the coming years will greatly improve observing system completeness for point sources through dense spatial coverage and frequent return times.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources using satellite observations of atmospheric methane

et al. 2022

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“…More recent studies have shown the feasibility of quantifying methane point sources from hyperspectral and multispectral missions such as PRISMA (Guanter et al, 2021), Sentinel-2 (S2) (Varon et al, 2021), Landsat-8 (Ehret et al, 2022) and WorldView-3 (Sánchez-García et al, 2021). These recent advances have revealed the existence of large point emissions from O&G production regions (Irakulis-Loitxate et al, 2021, 2022b, coal carbon mines (Guanter et al, 2021) and O&G offshore platforms (Irakulis-Loitxate et al, 2022a).…”

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confidence: 99%

Understanding the potential of Sentinel-2 for monitoring methane point emissions

Gorroño¹,

Varon

Irakulis-Loitxate³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. The use of satellite instruments to detect and quantify methane emissions from fossil fuel production activities is highly beneficial to support climate change mitigation. Different hyperspectral and multispectral satellite sensors have recently shown potential to detect and quantify point-source emissions from space. The Sentinel-2 (S2) mission, despite its limited spectral design, supports the detection of large emissions with global coverage and high revisit frequency thanks to coarse spectral coverage of methane absorption lines in the shortwave infrared. Validation of S2 methane retrieval algorithms is instrumental in accelerating the development of a systematic and global monitoring system for methane point sources. Here we develop a benchmarking framework for such validation. We first develop a methodology to generate simulated S2 datasets including methane point-source plumes. These benchmark datasets have been created for scenes in three oil and gas basins (Hassi Messaoud, Algeria; Korpeje, Turkmenistan; Permian Basin, USA) under different scene heterogeneity conditions and for simulated methane plumes with different spatial distributions. We use the simulated methane plumes to validate the retrieval for different flux rate levels and define a minimum detection threshold for each case study. The results suggest that for homogeneous surfaces, the detection limit of the proposed S2 methane retrieval ranges from 1000 kg h−1 to 2000 kg h−1, whereas for areas with large surface heterogeneity, the retrieval can only detect plumes in excess of 5000 kg h−1. The different sources of uncertainty in the flux rate estimates have also been examined. Dominant quantification errors are either wind-related or plume mask-related, depending on the surface type. Uncertainty in wind speed, both in the 10-m wind (U10) and in mapping U10 to the effective wind (Ueff ) driving plume transport, is the dominant source of error for quantifying individual plumes in homogeneous scenes. For heterogeneous scenes, the surface structure underlying the methane plume affects the plume masking and can become a dominant source of uncertainty.

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“…Successful examples of the use of inversions for CH 4 national emissions in large emitters countries for the agriculture and waste and the fossil fuel sectors are given in [ 19 ], and for oil/gas very large leaks of CH 4 , localised in extraction basins and along pipelines by [ 60 ] and ultra-emission events [ 53 ]. Namely, several oil and gas extraction countries like in the Persian Gulf region, Central Asia, and Russia, report significantly less fossil CH 4 emissions than what is constrained by GOSAT-based satellite inversions [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[ 54 ]) or metrological innovations (e.g., [ 5 ]), NASA's two Orbiting Carbon Observatories arguably set the current technology benchmark, but with poor coverage of the globe on a daily basis [ 15 , 24 ]. For methane, recent missions such as the Italian Space Agency’s PRISMA (Recursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa, [ 14 ]) launched in 2019, the Advanced Hyperspectral Imager (AHSI) aboard the China's GaoFen-5 satellite [ 64 ], launched in 2018, and the GHGsat, launched by the Indian Space Research Organization in 2016 and commercially operated, allow for high-resolution (30–50 m) methane mapping and improved detection of point sources and small plumes [ 40 , 53 , 99 , 100 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the use of Earth Observation to support estimates of national greenhouse gas emissions and sinks for the Global stocktake process: lessons learned from ESA-CCI RECCAP2

Bastos

Ciais

Sitch

et al. 2022

Carbon Balance Manage

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The Global Stocktake (GST), implemented by the Paris Agreement, requires rapid developments in the capabilities to quantify annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals consistently from the global to the national scale and improvements to national GHG inventories. In particular, new capabilities are needed for accurate attribution of sources and sinks and their trends to natural and anthropogenic processes. On the one hand, this is still a major challenge as national GHG inventories follow globally harmonized methodologies based on the guidelines established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but these can be implemented differently for individual countries. Moreover, in many countries the capability to systematically produce detailed and annually updated GHG inventories is still lacking. On the other hand, spatially-explicit datasets quantifying sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from Earth Observations (EO) are still limited by many sources of uncertainty. While national GHG inventories follow diverse methodologies depending on the availability of activity data in the different countries, the proposed comparison with EO-based estimates can help improve our understanding of the comparability of the estimates published by the different countries. Indeed, EO networks and satellite platforms have seen a massive expansion in the past decade, now covering a wide range of essential climate variables and offering high potential to improve the quantification of global and regional GHG budgets and advance process understanding. Yet, there is no EO data that quantifies greenhouse gas fluxes directly, rather there are observations of variables or proxies that can be transformed into fluxes using models. Here, we report results and lessons from the ESA-CCI RECCAP2 project, whose goal was to engage with National Inventory Agencies to improve understanding about the methods used by each community to estimate sources and sinks of GHGs and to evaluate the potential for satellite and in-situ EO to improve national GHG estimates. Based on this dialogue and recent studies, we discuss the potential of EO approaches to provide estimates of GHG budgets that can be compared with those of national GHG inventories. We outline a roadmap for implementation of an EO carbon-monitoring program that can contribute to the Paris Agreement.

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Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico

Cited by 38 publications

References 22 publications

Quantifying methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources using satellite observations of atmospheric methane

Quantifying methane emissions from the global scale down to point sources using satellite observations of atmospheric methane

Understanding the potential of Sentinel-2 for monitoring methane point emissions

On the use of Earth Observation to support estimates of national greenhouse gas emissions and sinks for the Global stocktake process: lessons learned from ESA-CCI RECCAP2

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