Comment on acp-2022-155
Abstract
We use satellite methane observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), from May 2018 to February 2020, to quantify methane emissions from individual oil and natural gas (O/G) basins in the US and Canada using a high-resolution (~ 25 km) atmospheric inverse analysis. Our satellite-derived emission estimates show good consistency with in-situ field measurements (R2 = 0.92) in 14 O/G basins distributed across the US and Canada. Aggregating our results to the national scale, we obtain O/G-related methane emission estimates of 12.6 ± 2.1 Tg a-1 for the US and 2.2 ± 0.6 Tg a-1 for Canada, respectively 80 % and 40 % higher than the national inventories reported to the United Nations. About 70 % of the discrepancy in the EPA inventory can be attributed to five O/G basins: the Permian, Haynesville, Anadarko, Eagle Ford and Barnett Basin, which in total account for 40 % of US emissions. We show more generally that our TROPOMI inversion framework can quantify methane emissions exceeding 0.2–0.5 Tg a-1 from individual O/G basins, thus providing an effective tool for monitoring methane emissions from large O/G basins globally.
Authors 16
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Environmental Defense Fund · Harvard University · Peking University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Affiliation as printed
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
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Affiliation as printed
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
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Daniel Zavala‐Araiza corresponding
Environmental Defense Fund · Utrecht University
Affiliation as printed
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, 3584 CC, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands
Affiliation as printed
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, the Netherlands
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands
Affiliation as printed
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Leiden, the Netherlands
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David Richard Lyon corresponding
Affiliation as printed
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
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Jian‐Xiong Sheng corresponding
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Affiliation as printed
Center for Global Change Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States
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Daniel J. Varon corresponding
Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Hannah O. Nesser corresponding
Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Zhen Qu corresponding
Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Xiao Hui Lu corresponding
Harvard University · Sun Yat-sen University
Affiliation as printed
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China 519082
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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Affiliation as printed
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington DC 20009, United States
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
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