Comment on egusphere-2025-6528
Abstract
Abstract. Understanding the spatial distribution and magnitude of methane emissions is critical for developing effective mitigation strategies, particularly in rapidly growing economies like India, the world’s most populous country and a top global methane emitter with diverse emission sources. We quantify India’s 2021 methane emissions at up to 0.25°×0.3125° resolution using TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) observations in a Bayesian inversion with the Integrated Methane Inversion framework (IMI). Prior emissions come from state-of-the-art global gridded bottom-up inventories and incorporate GHGSat-based estimates for eighteen landfills. The high-resolution inversion and incorporation of GHGSat data enable us to evaluate and interpret results at multiple policy-relevant scales. The national posterior emission estimate is 34.4 (32.0 – 40.4) Tg/yr, of which 31.5 (29.6 – 36.7) Tg yr-1 is anthropogenic, consistent with bottom-up prior emissions but 68 % higher than India’s UNFCCC inventory. National landfill and oil & gas emissions are 30 % higher, while coal emissions are 57 % lower than prior estimates. State-level analysis highlights seven states with higher emissions, with notably higher oil and gas emissions in Assam and Gujarat, and lower coal mining emissions in Rajasthan and Odisha. Urban-scale posterior estimates for fourteen cities reveal significant differences from the prior in ten cities. Posterior wastewater emissions are higher in nine cities, with the largest increases in Kolkata and Delhi, consistent 60–90 % of their populations lacking access to wastewater treatment facilities. GHGSat observations reveal landfills contribute 10–38 % of emissions in eleven cities, emphasizing the critical role of solid waste management. These results illustrate how satellite-based analyses can inform methane mitigation.
Authors 13
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands
Affiliation as printed
SRON Space Research Organization Netherlands, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands
Affiliation as printed
SRON Space Research Organization Netherlands, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands
Affiliation as printed
SRON Space Research Organization Netherlands, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
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Affiliation as printed
GHGSat Inc., Montréal, Canada
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Affiliation as printed
Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC India), New Delhi, India
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Affiliation as printed
Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC India), New Delhi, India
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Affiliation as printed
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Affiliation as printed
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
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University of Leicester · National Centre for Earth Observation
Affiliation as printed
Earth Observation Science, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
National Center for Earth Observations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
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National Institute for Environmental Studies
Affiliation as printed
National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan
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Space Research Organisation Netherlands · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Affiliation as printed
Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
SRON Space Research Organization Netherlands, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands
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