The International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO): Integration of methane data across scales for policy-relevant results

UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) was established to provide reliable, public, and policy-relevant data to facilitate actions to reduce methane emissions.  IMEO is collecting and integrating diverse methane emissions data streams that will help to fill gaps in knowledge and refine global understanding of the location and magnitude of emissions across sectors.  Together these data streams – which include satellite remote sensing data, detailed analyses from multi-scale measurement campaigns, bottom-up inventory data, and measurement-based industry reporting – complement one another and provide a fuller characterization of the spatial and temporal variability in emissions than they do individually.  Knowledge of this variability is key to understanding the emissions of different populations of emitters and to identifying key mitigation opportunities for specific populations of emitters.  Such data can also be used as cross-verification points for other estimates of population-scale emissions – such as from inverse modelling or elsewhere reported emissions.  In this work, we will summarize IMEO’s efforts to assemble and integrate spatio-temporally dynamic methane emissions data including insights from measurement campaigns across the world, high-resolution methane emissions data from satellites, and developing standards for company-reported, measurement-based source- and site-level emission from the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP2.0).