Keynote by Christian Frankenberg at the 2nd ICOS Science Conference in Helsinki, Finland, 27-29 Sep 2016.

1. Atmospheric Methane
From a gas well to a hemisphere
Christian Frankenberg
and many others

2. Recent changes in atmospheric methane

3. Recent papers on methane rise (just a few of them)

4. From the hemisphere to individual methane plumes
(back later)
4 Corners airborne campaign
Airborne methane remote measurements reveal heavy-
tail flux distribution in Four Corners region
Christian Frankenberga,b,1
, Andrew K. Thorpeb
, David R. Thompsonb
, Glynn Hulleyb
, Eric Adam Kortc
, Nick Vanceb
,
Jakob Borchardtd
, Thomas Kringsd
, Konstantin Gerilowskid
, Colm Sweeneye,f
, Stephen Conleyg,h
, Brian D. Bueb
,
Andrew D. Aubreyb
, Simon Hookb
, and Robert O. Greenb
a
Division of Geology and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125; b
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109; c
Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; d
Institute of
Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, 28334 Bremen, Germany; e
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of
Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309; f
Global Monitoring Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
Boulder, CO 80305; g
Scientific Aviation, Boulder, CO 80301; and h
Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA 95616
Edited by Gregory P. Asner, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, and approved June 17, 2016 (received for review April 10, 2016)
Methane (CH4) impacts climate as the second strongest anthropo- for underestimated methane emissions in bottom-up inventories

5. How it all got started SCIAMACHY Methane Anomalies
Kort, Frankenberg et al, GRL, 2014

6. How it all got started SCIAMACHY Methane Anomalies
Kort, Frankenberg et al, GRL, 2014
—> Estimated to be about 0.5Tg/yr, almost 10% of US total
Oil&Gas
d"
SCIAMACHY"xCH4"enhancements" Scaled"Model""xCH4"enhancements"

7. Potential Sources of CH4 in Four Corners Region
• Total Production
rate in San Juan
Basin about
1000 billion
cubic feet
(20Tg/yr)
• 0.5Tg/yr would
be about 2.5%
• Largest
Coalbed
methane
production area
in US

8. Methane Airborne Remote Sensing
AVIRIS-NG (5nm sampling, 400-2500nm)

9. Campaign Area

10. Airborne operations
AVIRIS-NG real time methane detection
(Thompson et al, AMT)
Real-Time CH4 display

11. Native resolution examples
(background is 2.3µm radiance in gray, meter axis)

12. Up-scaling to fluxes
(integrate methane amount in plume)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
IME (kg CH4)
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
Fluxestimate(kgCH4/hr)
r2
= 0.97
r2
= 0.96
Gaussian Integral Flux Inversion
In-situ airborne Flux Inversion

13. >200 plumes detected

14. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution — Log-normal
Detectionthreshold
Porter Ranch
60,000kg/hr

15. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution — Wellhead

16. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution — ???

17. Methane plume

18. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution

19. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution — underground storage tank

20. Methane plume from tank

21. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution - Wellhead

22. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution — Guesses welcome

23. 102
103
104
105
106
Flux rates (scfh)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Frequency
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux rates (kg/hr)
Plume distribution —
Unclear (multiple sources, maybe well completion? Near coal-mine

24. What does the log-normal distribution imply?
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentile (%) of sources (large to small)
0
20
40
60
80
100
totalfluxpercentage
Measured plumes
95% confidence interval
101
102
103
104
Fluxrate(kg/hr)
Flux distribution;
P
=0.30 Tg/yr (95% confidence=0.23–0.39)
measured flux rates