Attributing methane and carbon dioxide plumes by emission sector with the EMIT and AVIRIS-3 imaging spectrometers

Imaging spectrometers like NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) and the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer 3 (AVIRIS-3) have similar instrument parameters and methane and CO₂ mapping capability that enables direct attribution of observed plumes to the oil and gas, waste, and agriculture sectors. Onboard the International Space Station, EMIT can constrain methane and CO₂ emissions over a significant portion of the Earth’s surface. With improved spatial resolution, the airborne AVIRIS-3 instrument enables quantification of smaller emissions sources that compliment EMIT observations from space.

We provide an update of EMIT methane and CO₂ observations to date and highlight examples from the oil and gas, waste, and agriculture sectors. For the first time, we present AVIRIS-3 methane and CO₂ results. The fine spatial resolution of these instruments allows pinpointing of multiple emission sources in close proximity from different sectors, which is not possible with coarser spatial resolution instruments. These instruments offer the potential to improve understanding of greenhouse gas budgets, inform mitigation strategies, and in some cases lead to voluntary mitigation.

In support of NASA’s Open Source Science Initiative, all EMIT data and greenhouse gas data products are available through the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) and code is open source. EMIT results are also available through the greenhouse gas applications online mapping tool (https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/data/data-portal/Greenhouse-Gfases/) and U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center (https://earth.gov/ghgcenter/).

Figure 1: Over 900 methane plume complexes observed by NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) are available through the EMIT greenhouse gas applications online mapping tool (https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/data/data-portal/Greenhouse-Gfases/) and U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center (https://earth.gov/ghgcenter/).