2010–2015 North American methane emissions, sectoral contributions, and trends: a high-resolution inversion of GOSAT observations of atmospheric methane

Maasakkers, Joannes D.; Jacob, Daniel J.; Sulprizio, Melissa P.; Scarpelli, Tia R.; Nesser, Hannah; Sheng, Jianxiong; Zhang, Yuzhong; Lu, Xiao; Bloom, A. Anthony; Bowman, Kevin W.; Worden, John R.; Parker, Robert J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4339-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4339-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4339-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

Research article

|

22 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 22 Mar 2021

2010–2015 North American methane emissions, sectoral contributions, and trends: a high-resolution inversion of GOSAT observations of atmospheric methane

Joannes D. Maasakkers, Daniel J. Jacob, Melissa P. Sulprizio, Tia R. Scarpelli, Hannah Nesser, Jianxiong Sheng, Yuzhong Zhang, Xiao Lu, A. Anthony Bloom, Kevin W. Bowman, John R. Worden, and Robert J. Parker

Data sets

ESA Greenhouse Gases Climate Change Initiative (GHG_cci): Column-averaged CH4 from GOSAT generated with the OCPR (UoL-PR) Proxy algorithm (CH4_GOS_OCPR), v7.0 ESA CCI GHG project team https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f9154243fd8744bdaf2a59c39033e659

Observation Package (ObsPack) Data Products NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory https://doi.org/10.25925/20190108

Model code and software

geoschem/GCClassic: GEOS-Chem 13.0.0-rc.1: Updated release candidate for GEOS-Chem (in Classic mode), Version 13.0.0-rc.1 The International GEOS-Chem User Community https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4437679

Short summary

We use 2010–2015 GOSAT satellite observations of atmospheric methane over North America in a high-resolution inversion to estimate methane emissions. We find general consistency with the gridded EPA inventory but higher oil and gas production emissions, with oil production emissions twice as large as in the latest EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory. We find lower wetland emissions than predicted by WetCHARTs and a small increasing trend in the eastern US, apparently related to unconventional oil/gas.