Quantifying U.S. methane emission trends (2019-2024) through high resolution inversion of satellite observations

The United States is the world’s largest emitter of methane from oil and gas and the second-largest methane emitter overall. Inversions of atmospheric observations provide an empirical method for evaluating progress on emission goals. Here, we present U.S. annual methane emission trends from 2019 to 2024 at up to ~25 km resolution inferred from analytical inversion of blended TROPOMI+GOSAT satellite observations. For each year, we use the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory as the prior estimate, then generate an ensemble of posterior emission estimates by applying the Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI 2.0) inverse modeling framework. Our results include closed-form error characterization through analytical minimization of the Bayesian cost function and uncertainties derived from the ensemble of inversion estimates. The high resolution of our posterior estimate allows us to generate sector-resolved emissions at the national, state, and basin level. Our results comprehensively assess U.S. progress on methane mitigation and demonstrate the capability of advanced modeling tools for rapid generation of top-down emission estimates to inform climate policy.