The Role of Remote Sensing for Quantifying and Reducing Methane Emissions

In the face of escalating climate change, reducing atmospheric methane concentrations has emerged as a near-term mitigation strategy. Atmospheric observations of methane from airborne and satellite remote sensing platforms may be a pivotal resource for mitigation as it offers scalability, precision, and improved understanding of the sources and sinks of methane. In the oil & gas sector, numerous field campaigns over the last decade, including numerous Carbon Mapper airborne surveys, have shown that many basins in the U.S. and globally exhibit strong "super-emitter" behavior, meaning that a small fraction of infrastructure is responsible for disproportionate emissions. Super-emitters in some cases are very long lasting - we show from recent 2024 Carbon Mapper campaigns in the Permian Basin that at least 20% of super-emitter emissions derive from individual sources that whose large emission behavior lasts days to weeks on end. In the landfill sector, landfill models that underpin inventories struggle to capture the complexity of gas generation and collection efficiency, leading to significant discrepancies with airborne and satellite observations. These discrepancies often are due to generally unquantified sources like the landfill working face. Ultimately, using remote sensing platforms to quantify, characterize, and validate emission reductions requires a systematic global observing solution. With the launch of Carbon Mapper Coalition's Tanager-1 satellite, Carbon Mapper will contribute to the growing remote sensing observing system for greenhouse gas observation and mitigation.

Speaker: DAniel Cusworth, Carbon Mapper