References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

1680-7324

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-14-2625-2014

Retrieval of methane source strengths in Europe using a simple modeling approach to assess the potential of spaceborne lidar observations

Weaver

¹ ² ³ Kiemle

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1231-2813

³ Kawa

S. R.

¹ Aalto

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3264-7947

⁴ Necki

⁵ Steinbacher

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7195-8115

⁶ Arduini

⁷ Apadula

⁸ Berkhout

⁹ Hatakka

⁴

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland

Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Air Pollution/Environmental Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy

Research on Energy Systems, Environment and Sustainable Development Department, Milano, Italy

RIVM, Centre for Environmental Monitoring, Bilthoven, the Netherlands

14 03 2014

14 5 2625 2637

2014

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This article is available from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/14/2625/2014/acp-14-2625-2014.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/14/2625/2014/acp-14-2625-2014.pdf

We investigate the sensitivity of future spaceborne lidar measurements to changes in surface methane emissions. We use surface methane observations from nine European ground stations and a Lagrangian transport model to infer surface methane emissions for 2010. Our inversion shows the strongest emissions from the Netherlands, the coal mines in Upper Silesia, Poland, and wetlands in southern Finland. The simulated methane surface concentrations capture at least half of the daily variability in the observations, suggesting that the transport model is correctly simulating the regional transport pathways over Europe. With this tool we can test whether proposed methane lidar instruments will be sensitive to changes in surface emissions. We show that future lidar instruments should be able to detect a 50% reduction in methane emissions from the Netherlands and Germany, at least during summer.

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