Using carbon-14 and carbon-13 measurements for source attribution of atmospheric methane in the Athabasca oil sands region

Gonzalez Moguel, Regina; Vogel, Felix; Ars, Sébastien; Schaefer, Hinrich; Turnbull, Jocelyn C.; Douglas, Peter M. J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2121-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2121-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2121-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 3

Research article

|

15 Feb 2022

Research article |

| 15 Feb 2022

Using carbon-14 and carbon-13 measurements for source attribution of atmospheric methane in the Athabasca oil sands region

Regina Gonzalez Moguel, Felix Vogel, Sébastien Ars, Hinrich Schaefer, Jocelyn C. Turnbull, and Peter M. J. Douglas

Data sets

Fort McKay South CH4 and CO2 mole fractions August 2019 Regina Gonzalez Moguel, Peter Douglas, Felix Vogel, Sebastien Ars, Hinrich Schaefer, and Jocelyn Turnbull https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17217542.v1

Short summary

Evaluating methane (CH₄) sources in the Athabasca oil sands region (AOSR) is crucial to effectively mitigate CH₄ emissions. We tested the use of carbon isotopes to estimate source contributions from key CH₄ sources in the AOSR and found that 56 ± 18 % of CH₄ emissions originated from surface mining and processing facilities, 34 ± 18 % from tailings ponds, and 10 ± < 1 % from wetlands, confirming previous findings and showing that this method can be successfully used to partition CH₄ sources.