Advancing the Use of Methane Emission Quantification Using TROPOMI Data

Advancing the Use of Methane Emission Quantification Using TROPOMI Data

van Diepen, Simon (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2020-07-07

Methane is the second-strongest anthropogenic greenhouse gas, whose concentrations have more than doubled since pre-industrial times. Due to its short atmospheric lifetime, it is promising for climate change mitigation. This thesis focuses on estimating methane emissions from time-averaged satellite-measured concentration maps. The current method to do that systematically underestimates emission rates by 40%, and has an error estimate larger than 100% for most sources. I developed a new mass-balance method to reduce these errors, taking into account emissions moving from the source region into the surroundings. Its performance was tested using a year-long atmospheric transport model run over the United States. The new method has a lower emission underestimation of only 14-19%, while the errors are reduced by 60-70% compared to the old method. Direct application of the new method on TROPOMI data over two known large emission regions gives emission rates consistent with recent literature.

methane
emission
Quantification
TROPOMI

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:40948a34-3abe-44fd-a25b-3390c77075b1

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Simon van Diepen