MethaneAIR L4 Point Sources v1

EDF/MethaneSAT/MethaneAIR/L4point
Dataset Availability
2021-07-30T00:00:00Z–2023-10-13T00:00:00Z
Dataset Provider
Earth Engine Snippet
FeatureCollection
ee.FeatureCollection("EDF/MethaneSAT/MethaneAIR/L4point")
FeatureView
ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer("EDF/MethaneSAT/MethaneAIR/L4point_FeatureView")

Description

This dataset provides data for high-emitting methane point source detections (kg/hr) over 13 oil and gas or coal extraction areas from Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas in the west to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia in the east, plus three urban areas (New York City, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City).

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. At least 30% of today's global warming is driven by methane from human actions. Cutting methane emissions associated with human activities - including avoidable emissions from oil and gas operations, agriculture, and waste management - is the single fastest way to slow the rate of global warming.

Area emissions are estimated from observed XCH4 using a geostatistical inverse model framework (see "MethaneAIR L4 Area Sources" dataset). An atmospheric transport model - the Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport model, "STILT"; Lin et al. (2003), Fasoli et al. (2018); driven by meteorological data from the NOAA High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Model "HRRR" - is used to link variations in observed XCH4 to potential upwind sources. A hierarchical approach is used to separate XCH4 variations due to area emissions from those due to point source emissions or inflow across the domain boundary (the "background" concentration). Point source emissions are determined individually (see "MethaneAIR L4 Point Sources" dataset) and pre-subtracted from the observed XCH4. An inverse model is then used to estimate XCH4 inflow across the boundary domain. Finally, area emissions are estimated using a geostatistical inverse model with an enforced non-negative solution. Total emissions are the sum of area and point source emissions.

This dataset was generated using MethaneAIR measurements taken on flights between 30 July 2021 and 13 October 2023. MethaneAIR is an airborne precursor of the MethaneSAT satellite mission, managed by MethaneSAT LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Environmental Defense Fund. The methane emission fluxes were produced using a point source detection and emissions quantification framework specialized to exploit the high spatial resolution, wide spatial coverage, and high precision of MethaneAIR data (methodology is described in Chulakdabba et al. (2023).) The point source quantification framework was extensively tested in blind controlled-release experiments as detailed in Chulakdabba et al. (2023) and Abbadi et al. (2024). Not all data products are available for all flights.

For additional information about the MethaneAIR instrument, instrument calibration and emission detections, please refer to recent publications by Loughner et al. (2021), Staebell et al. (2021), Conway et al. (2023), Chulakadabba et al. (2023), Abbadi et al. (2023), Omara et al. (2023), and Miller et al. (2023).

Contact the data provider for more information about the project at this link: https://www.methanesat.org/contact/

Table Schema

Table Schema

Name Type Description
plume_id INT

Plume id (unique per flight).

flux INT

Methane flux quantification.

flux_hi INT

Higher estimate of methane flux quantification, in kg/h.

flux_lo INT

Lower estimate of methane flux quantification, in kg/h.

flux_sd INT

Standard deviation of methane flux quantification, in kg/h.

in_gim_bound INT

Whether the point source is within the footprint of the L4 GIM area emissions product (0 if false, 1 if true).

flight_id STRING

Research flight identifier.

basin STRING

Oil and Gas basin (e.g. Permian) or area of interest (e.g. New York City).

time_coverage_start STRING

Data collection start time in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ format STRING (ISO 8601).

time_coverage_end STRING

Data collection end time in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ format STRING (ISO 8601).

processing_id STRING

(internal) Processing run identifier that represents the calculations that led to the features. It is not an attribute describing the flight, but the processing pipeline.

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

Use of this data is subject to MethaneSAT's Content License Terms of Use.

Citations

Citations:
  • Chulakadabba, A., Sargent, M., Lauvaux, T., Benmergui, J. S., Franklin, J. E., Chan Miller, C., Wilzewski, J. S., Roche, S., Conway, E., Souri, A. H., Sun, K., Luo, B., Hawthrone, J., Samra, J., Daube, B. C., Liu, X., Chance, K., Li, Y., Gautam, R., Omara, M., Rutherford, J. S., Sherwin, E. D., Brandt, A., and Wofsy, S. C. 2023. Methane point source quantification using MethaneAIR: a new airborne imaging spectrometer, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 5771-5785. doi:10.5194/amt-16-5771-2023,

Explore with Earth Engine

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.FeatureCollection("EDF/MethaneSAT/MethaneAIR/L4point");

// Add a `style` property with `pointSize` dependent on flux value.
dataset = dataset.map(function(feature) {
  var size = ee.Number(feature.get('flux')).divide(150).min(25);
  return feature.set('style', { pointSize: size, color: 'red'});
});
var datasetVis = dataset.style({styleProperty: 'style'});

// Center on one of the available areas of interests.
Map.setCenter(-102.5, 31.85, 8);
Map.addLayer(datasetVis, null, 'Methane point sources flux in kg/h');
Open in Code Editor

Visualize as a FeatureView

A FeatureView is a view-only, accelerated representation of a FeatureCollection. For more details, visit the FeatureView documentation.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var fvLayer = ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer('EDF/MethaneSAT/MethaneAIR/L4point_FeatureView');

var visParams = {
  color: '00909F',
  fillColor: 'b5ffb4',
  opacity: 1,
  pointSize: 5
};

fvLayer.setVisParams(visParams);
fvLayer.setName('Feature view of methane point sources flux in kg/h');

// Center on one of the available areas of interests.
Map.setCenter(-102.5, 31.85, 8);
Map.add(fvLayer);
Open in Code Editor