ICOS Science Conference 2020, Session 15

1. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 1
Atmospheric transport model analysis of methane emissions from
oil- and gas-production in Romania observed during the
ROMEO campaign in 2019
Dominik Brunner, Michael Steiner, Michael Jähn
Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland
MEMO2 : Methane goes Mobile - Measurements and Modelling
Mariano Mertens, Patrick Jöckel
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Germany
Magdalena Ardelean, Andreea Calcan
INCAS, National Institute for Aerospace Research, Romania
Stefan Schwietzke
Environmental Defense Fund, Germany
Thomas Lauvaux
LSCE, CEA, UVSQ/IPSL, France
Thomas Röckmann, Hossein Maazallahi
Utrecht University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands

2. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 2
o Oil- and gas-production is an important yet uncertain source of CH4 emissions,
~6% of anthropogenic emissions in Europe, ~22% globally (Saunois et al. 2019)
o Romania contributes ~15% to European CH4 emissions from oil- and gas-sector,
but available numbers are highly uncertain
o Large campaign ROMEO (ROmanian Methane Emissions from Oil & gas) conducted in
Sep/Oct 2019 in Romania with measurements from cars, drones and aircraft
o 2 aircraft flew surveys over production regions and sampled integrated CH4 signals
from dense clusters of oil- and gas-wells
o Two options for emission quantification from aircraft flights:
o mass balance (purely based on observations of CH4 and wind)
o inverse modelling using atmospheric transport models
Motivation

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Measurement campaign, 30 Sep – 30 Oct
Regions of interest around clusters of oil- & gas-sources ROMEO team and measurement platforms

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Aircraft sampling strategy
«mass balance flights»
loops around clusters or
larger regions at
multiple altitudes
«raster flights»
multiple transects
perpendicular to main wind
direction  detect plumes
downwind of sources
Example of mass balance fligths on 7 Oct 2019
1 2

5. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 5
Overview of available flights
o Scientific Aviation:
o 10 flights: 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17, 18, 21 Oct
o mainly mass balance flights
o CH4, CO2, C2H6, p, T, H2O, wind
o INCAS aircraft:
o 12 flights: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 23 Oct
o mainly raster flights
o CH4, CO2, CO, p, H2O
Raster flight on 23 Oct 2019
Survey and loops on 7 Oct 2019

6. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 6
CH4 atmospheric transport modelling
o 3 mesoscale transport models
o COSMO-GHG (Empa)
o COSMO/MESSy (DLR)
o WRF-Chem (LSCE)
o Simulation setup
o ~2 km x 2 km resolution
o 27 Sep – 30 Oct 2019
o Boundary conditions from ECMWF/CAMS
o 3 emission inventories
o TNO_GHGco inventory at 5 km x 5 km resolution
o EDF/Harvard 1 km gridded data set of oil- and gas wells, whole Romania
o Local O&G operator data set of locations of production sites, emission
factors based on preliminary ground-based ROMEO measurements
o 34 individual tracers representing different CH4 sources
E.g. emissions from individual oil- and gas-production clusters
Model domain

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Example of individual tracers
Background CH4 from ECMWF CAMS
CH4 from all
anthropogenic
sources in
model domain
CH4 from O&G
production sites
CH4elevationabovebackground

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Impact of meteorological data assimilation
in COSMO-GHG model
with assimilationwithout assimilation
part of SA flight on 12 Oct 2019

9. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 9
Results sometimes differ strongly
between models
part of SA flight on 3 Oct 2019
COSMO-GHG
COSMO/MESSy
CH4 at flight altitude CH4 vertical curtains East-west wind component U

10. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 10
Analysis of SA flight on 17 Oct 2019
• Cold bias of 2.0 - 2.5°C in
COSMO-GHG model
• Structures in observed CH4 well
reproduced except towards the end

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Analysis of SA flight on 17 Oct 2019
around 11 UTC
Flight track
O&G wells
and facilities

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Analysis of SA flight on 17 Oct 2019
around 12 UTC
Flight track
O&G wells
and facilities

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Analysis of SA flight on 17 Oct 2019
around 14 UTC
Flight track
O&G wells
and facilities

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Next steps
o Further evaluation and comparison of model results (all 3 models)
o Emission quantification for selected cases where simulated meteorology
agrees well with observations (wind direction & speed, ABL heights)
o Comparison with mass-balance estimates where possible
o Comparison with upscaled estimates from ground-based mobile measurements
o Contribute to overall project goal to obtain improved estimates of
CH4 emissions from the oil- and gas-production sector in Romania

15. ICOS Science Conference 2020 | dominik.brunner@empa.ch 15
Conclusions
o High-resolution mesoscale CH4 simulations conducted to
o support measurement campaign (forecast mode)
o Support interpretation of aircraft measurements
o Quantify emissions for individual clusters of O&G production sites and
for O&G production sector in Romania as a whole
o 34 CH4 tracers representing different O&G production clusters or other CH4 sources simulated to
enable attribution of measured CH4 to production sites and to enable top-down emission estimation
o Detailed information on position of oil- and gas-wells was provided for Romania (with a default EF)
o Preliminary conclusions from ongoing model evaluation:
o Meteorological data assimilation is likely important despite limited domain size
o Results sensitive to height of simulated ABL, especially since aircraft often crossed top of ABL
o Quantitative analysis probably has to be limited to cases with well-simulated meteorology
o Results indicate that emissions differ substantially between individual O&G production clusters