Testing Remote Sensing Aerial and Satellite Methane Detection Capabilities

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with anthropogenic emissions serving as a key contributor to climate change. In the oil and gas sector, “super-emitters” are a relatively small number of methane sources that are disproportionately responsible for a large fraction of total methane emissions. However, advances in remote sensing technologies are enabling airplanes and satellites to rapidly identify and quantify these large emitters, changing our understanding of the overall methane budget and advancing mitigation efforts. In Fall 2022, Stanford conducted a 2-month field campaign to test five airplanes and nine satellites used for detecting methane. We performed over 700 single-blind controlled releases to evaluate to evaluate their detection and quantification capabilities. In this talk, I will share results of aircraft and satellite performance, and discuss implications for methane mitigation efforts.

Speaker: Sahar El Abbadi, Stanford University

Attend in person or online.