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Fugitive methane (CH 4) emissions occur in the whole chain of oil and gas production, including from extraction, transportation, storage, and distribution. Such emissions are usually detected and quantified by conducting surveys as close as possible to the source location. However, these surveys are labour-intensive, are costly, and fail to not provide continuous emissions monitoring. The deployment of permanent sensor networks in the vicinity of industrial CH 4 emitting facilities would overcome the limitations of surveys by providing accurate emission estimates, thanks to continuous sampling of emission plumes. Yet high-precision instruments are too costly to deploy in such networks. Low-cost sensors using a metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) are presented as a cheap alternative for such deployments due to their compact dimensions and to their sensitivity to CH 4. In this study, we demonstrate the ability of two types of MOS sensors (TGS 2611-C00 and TGS 2611-E00) manufactured by Figaro® to reconstruct a CH 4 signal, as measured by a high-precision reference gas analyser, during a 7 d controlled release campaign conducted by TotalEnergies® in autumn 2019 near Pau, France. We propose a baseline voltage correction linked to atmospheric CH 4 background variations per instrument based on an iterative comparison of neighbouring observations, i.e. data points. Two CH 4 mole fraction reconstruction models were compared: multilayer perceptron (MLP) and second-degree polynomial. Emission estimates were then computed using an inversion approach based on the adjoint of a Gaussian dispersion model. Despite obtaining emission estimates comparable with those obtained using high-precision instruments (average emission rate error of 25 % and average location error of 9.5 m), the application of these emission estimates is limited to adequate environmental conditions. Emission estimates are also influenced by model errors in the inversion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

​​​​​​​We have used the variational inversion drivers of the recent Community Inversion Framework (CIF), coupled to a European configuration of the CHIMERE regional chemistry transport model and its adjoint to derive carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) TIR-NIR (thermal-infrared near-infrared) observations, for a period of over 10 years from 2011 to 2021. The analysis of the inversion results reveals the challenges associated with the inversion of CO emissions at the regional scale over Europe. Annual budgets of national emissions have decreased by about 1 %–11 % over the decade and across Europe. These decreases are mainly due to negative corrections during autumn and winter. The posterior CO emissions follow a decreasing trend over the European Union and United Kingdom area of about - 2.2 % yr -1 , slightly lower than in the prior emissions. The assimilation of the MOPITT observation in the inversions indeed attenuates the decreasing trend of the CO emissions in the TNO inventory over areas benefiting from the highest number of MOPITT super-observations (particularly over Italy and over the Balkans), and particularly in autumn and winter. The small corrections of the CO emissions at national scales by the inversion can be attributed, first, to the general consistency between the TNO-GHGco-v3 inventory and the satellite data. Analysis of specific patterns such as the impact of the Covid-19 crisis reveals that it can also be seen as a lack of observation constraints to adjust the prior estimate of the emissions. The large errors associated with the observations in our inversion framework and the lack of data over large parts of Europe are sources of limitation on the observational constraint. Emission hotspots generate a relatively strong local signal, which is much better caught and exploited by the inversions than the larger-scale signals, despite the moderate spatial resolution of the MOPITT data. This is why the corrections of these hotspot emissions are stronger and more convincing than the corrections of the national- and continental-scale emissions. Accurate monitoring of the CO national anthropogenic emissions may thus require modelling and inversion systems at spatial resolutions finer than those used here as well as satellite images at high spatial resolution. The CO data of the TROPOMI instrument on board the Sentinel-5P mission should be well suited for such a perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methane emissions from natural gas systems are increasingly scrutinized, and accurate reporting requires quantification of site- and source-level measurement. We evaluate the performance of 10 available state-of-the-art CH 4 emission quantification approaches against a blind controlled-release experiment at an inerted natural gas compressor station in 2021. The experiment consisted of 17 blind 2 h releases at a single exhaust point or multiple simultaneous ones. The controlled releases covered a range of methane flow rates from 0.01 to 50 kg h -1. Measurement platforms included aircraft, drones, trucks, vans, ground-based stations, and handheld systems. Herewith, we compare their respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity depending on the emission rates and atmospheric conditions. Most systems were able to quantify the releases within an order of magnitude. The level of errors from the different systems was not significantly influenced by release rates larger than 0.1 kg h -1 , with much poorer results for the 0.01 kg h -1 release. It was found that handheld optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras underestimated the emissions. In contrast, the "site-level" systems, relying on atmospheric dispersion, tended to overestimate the emission rates. We assess the dependence of emission quantification performance on key parameters such as wind speed, deployment constraints, and measurement duration. At the low wind speeds encountered (below 2 m s -1), the experiments did not reveal a significant dependence on wind speed. The ability to quantify individual sources degraded during multiple-source releases. Compliance with the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership's (OGMP 2.0) highest level of reporting may require a combination of the specific advantages of each measurement technique and will depend on reconciliation approaches. Self-reported uncertainties were either not available or were based on the standard deviation in a series of independent realizations or fixed values from expert judgment or theoretical considerations. For most systems, the overall relative errors estimated in this study are higher than self-reported uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fugitive methane (CH4) emission occur in the whole chain of oil and gas production, from the extraction, transportation, storage and distribution. The detection and quantification of such emissions are conducted usually from surveys as close as possible to the source location. However, these surveys are labor intensive, costly and they do not provide continuous monitoring of the emissions. The deployment of permanent networks of sensors in the vicinity of industrial facilities would overcome the limitations of surveys by providing accurate estimates thanks to continuous sampling of the plumes. High precision instruments are too costly to deploy in such networks. Low-cost sensors like Metal oxide semiconductors (MOS) are presented as a cheap alternative for such deployments due to its compact dimensions and to its sensitivity to CH4. In this study we test the ability of two types of MOS sensors from the manufacturer Figaro® (TGS 2611-C00 and TGS 2611-E00) deployed in six chambers to reconstruct an actual signal from a source in open air corresponding to a series of controlled CH4 releases and we assess the accuracy of the emission estimates computed from reconstructed CH4 mole fractions from voltages measurements of these sensors. A baseline correction of the voltage linked to background variations is presented based on an iterative comparison of neighboring observations. Two reconstruction models were compared, multilayer perceptron (MLP) and 2nd degree polynomial, providing similar performances meeting our target requirement on all the chambers when the input variable is the TGS 2611-C00 sensor. The emission estimates were then computed using an inversion approach based on the adjoint of a Gaussian dispersion model obtaining promising results with an emission rate error of 25% and a location error of 9.5 m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have used the variational inversion drivers of the recent Community Inversion Framework (CIF), coupled to a European configuration of the CHIMERE regional chemistry transport model and its adjoint to derive carbon monixide (CO) emissions from the MOPITT TIR-NIR observations, for a period of over 10 years from 2011 to 2021. The analysis of the inversion results reveals the challenges associated with the inversion of CO emissions at the regional scale over Europe. Annual budgets of the national emissions are decreased by about 1–11 % over the decade and across Europe. These decreases are mainly due to negative corrections during autumn and winter. The posterior CO emissions follow a decreasing trend over the European Union + United Kingdom area with a trend of about -2.2 %/year, slightly lower than in the prior emissions. The assimilation of the MOPITT observation in the inversions indeed attenuates the decreasing trend of the CO emissions in the TNO inventory over areas benefiting from the highest number of MOPITT super-observations (particularly over Italy and over the Balkans), and particularly in autumn and winter. The small corrections of the CO emissions at national scales by the inversion can be attributed, first, to the general consistency between the TNO-GHGco-v3 inventory and the satellite data. Analysis of specific patterns such as the impact of the covid-19 crisis reveal that it can also be seen as a lack of observation constraint to adjust the prior estimate of the emissions. The large errors in the observations, and the lack of data over large parts of Europe are sources of limitation on the observational constraint. Emission hot spots generate a relatively strong local signal, which is much better caught and exploited by the inversions than the larger scale signals, despite the moderate spatial resolution of the MOPITT data. This is why the corrections of these hot spot emissions are stronger and more convincing than the corrections of the national and continental scale emissions. Accurate monitoring of the CO national anthropogenic emissions may thus require modeling and inversion systems at spatial resolution finer than those used here, as well satellite images at high spatial resolution. The CO data of the TROPOMI instrument onboard the Sentinel-5P mission should be well suited for such a perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methane emissions from natural gas systems are increasingly scrutinized and accurate reporting requires site- and source-level measurement-based quantification. We evaluate the performance of ten available, state-of-the-art CH4 emission quantification approaches against a blind controlled release experiment at an inerted natural gas compressor station in 2021. The experiment consisted of 17 blind, 2-hour releases at single or multiple simultaneous exhaust points. The controlled releases covered a range of methane flow rates from 0.01 kg h-1 to 50 kg h-1. Measurement platforms included aircraft, drones, trucks, van, and ground-based stations, as well as handheld systems. Herewith, we compare their respective strengths, weaknesses, and potential complementarity depending on the emission rates and atmospheric conditions. Most systems were able to quantify the releases within an order of magnitude. The level of errors from the different systems was not significantly influenced by release rates larger than 0.1 kg h-1, with much poorer results for the 0.01 kg h-1 release. It was found that handheld OGI cameras underestimated the emissions. In contrast, the 'site-level' systems, relying on atmospheric dispersion, tended to overestimate the emission rates. We assess the dependence of the emission quantification performance against key parameters such as wind speed, deployment constraints and measurement duration. At the low windspeeds encountered (below 2 m s-1), the experiments did not reveal a significant dependence on wind speed. The ability to quantify individual sources was degraded during multiple-source releases. Compliance with the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP2.0) highest level of reporting may require a combination of the specific advantages of each measurement technique and will depend on reconciliation approaches. Self-reported uncertainties were either not available, or based on standard deviation in a series of independent realizations or fixed value from expert judgement or theoretical considerations. For most systems, site-level overall relative errors estimated in this study are higher than self-reported uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The land and ocean act as a sink for fossil-fuel emissions, thereby slowing the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (1). Although the uptake of carbon by oceanic and terrestrial processes has kept pace with accelerating carbon dioxide emissions until now, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations exhibit a large variability on interannual timescales (2), considered to be driven primarily by terrestrial ecosystem processes dominated by tropical rainforests (3). We use a terrestrial biogeochemical model, atmospheric carbon dioxide inversion and global carbon budget accounting methods to investigate the evolution of the terrestrial carbon sink over the past 30 years, with a focus on the underlying mechanisms responsible for the exceptionally large land carbon sink reported in 2011 (ref. 2). Here we show that our three terrestrial carbon sink estimates are in good agreement and support the finding of a 2011 record land carbon sink. Surprisingly, we find that the global carbon sink anomaly was driven by growth of semi-arid vegetation in the Southern Hemisphere, with almost 60 per cent of carbon uptake attributed to Australian ecosystems, where prevalent La Nina conditions caused up to six consecutive seasons of increased precipitation. In addition, since 1981, a six per cent expansion of vegetation cover over Australia was associated with a fourfold increase in the sensitivity of continental net carbon uptake to precipitation. Our findings suggest that the higher turnover rates of carbon pools in semi-arid biomes are an increasingly important driver of global carbon cycle inter-annual variability and that tropical rainforests may become less relevant drivers in the future. More research is needed to identify to what extent the carbon stocks accumulated during wet years are vulnerable to rapid decomposition or loss through fire in subsequent years., Each year, on average, land and ocean carbon sinks absorb the equivalent of about half of the global fossil fuel emissions, thereby providing a critical service that slows the rise [...]

Quantification of land surface-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes and their trends and uncertainties is essential for monitoring progress of the EU27+UK bloc as it strives to meet ambitious targets determined by both international agreements and internal regulation. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of fossil sources (CO2 fossil) and natural sources and sinks over land (CO2 land) using bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) approaches for the European Union and United Kingdom (EU27+UK), updating earlier syntheses (Petrescu et al., 2020, 2021b). Given the wide scope of the work and the variety of approaches involved, this study aims to answer essential questions identified in the previous syntheses and understand the differences between datasets, particularly for poorly characterized fluxes from managed ecosystems. The work integrates updated emission inventory data, process-based model results, data-driven sectoral model results, and inverse modeling estimates, extending the previous period 1990-2018 to the year 2020 to the extent possible. BU and TD products are compared with European National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGHGIs) reported by Parties including the year 2019 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The uncertainties of the EU27+UK NGHGI were evaluated using the standard deviation reported by the EU Member States following the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and harmonized by gap-filling procedures. Variation in estimates produced with other methods, such as atmospheric inversion models (TD) or spatially disaggregated inventory datasets (BU), originate from within-model uncertainty related to parameterization as well as structural differences between models. By comparing NGHGIs with other approaches, key sources of differences between estimates arise primarily in activities. System boundaries and emission categories create differences in CO2 fossil datasets, while different land use definitions for reporting emissions from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities result in differences for CO2 land. The latter has important consequences for atmospheric inversions, leading to inversions reporting stronger sinks in vegetation and soils than are reported by the NGHGI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable quantification of the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), including that of their trends and uncertainties, is essential to monitoring the progress in mitigating anthropogenic emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of estimates for all anthropogenic and natural sources and sinks of CO2 for the European Union and UK (EU27 + UK), derived from a combination of state-of-the-art bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) data sources and models. Given the wide scope of the work and the variety of datasets involved, this study focuses on identifying essential questions which need to be answered to properly understand the differences between various datasets, in particular with regards to the less-well characterized fluxes from managed ecosystems. The work integrates recent emission inventory data, process-based ecosystem model results, data-driven sector model results, and inverse modelling estimates, over the period 1990-2018. BU and TD products are compared with European national GHG inventories (NGHGI) reported under the UNFCCC in 2019, aiming to assess and understand the differences between approaches. For the uncertainties in NGHGI, we used the standard deviation obtained by varying parameters of inventory calculations, reported by the Member States following the IPCC guidelines. Variation in estimates produced with other methods, like atmospheric inversion models (TD) or spatially disaggregated inventory datasets (BU), arise from diverse sources including within-model uncertainty related to parameterization as well as structural differences between models. In comparing NGHGI with other approaches, a key source of uncertainty is that related to different system boundaries and emission categories (CO2 fossil) and the use of different land use definitions for reporting emissions from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities (CO2 land). At the EU27 + UK level, the NGHGI (2019) fossil CO2 emissions (including cement production) account for 2624 Tg CO2 in 2014 while all the other seven bottom-up sources are consistent with the NGHGI and report a mean of 2588 (± 463 Tg CO2). The inversion reports 2700 Tg CO2 (± 480 Tg CO2), well in line with the national inventories. Over 2011-2015, the CO2 land sources/sinks from NGHGI estimates report -90 Tg C yr-1 ± 30 Tg C while all other BU approaches report a mean sink of -98 Tg yr-1 (± 362 Tg C from DGVMs only). For the TD model ensemble results, we observe a much larger spread for regional inversions (i.e., mean of 253 Tg C yr-1 ± 400 T g C yr-1). This concludes that a) current independent approaches are consistent with NGHGI b) their uncertainty is too large to allow a verification because of model differences and probably also because of the definition of CO2 flux obtained from different approaches. The referenced datasets related to figures are visualized at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4288883 (Petrescu et al., 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to track progress towards the global climate targets, the parties that signed the Paris Climate Agreement will regularly report their anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions based on energy statistics and CO2 emission factors. Independent evaluation of this self-reporting system is a fast-growing research topic. Here, we study the value of satellite observations of the column CO2 concentrations to estimate CO2 anthropogenic emissions with five years of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) retrievals over and around China. With the detailed information of emission source locations and the local wind, we successfully observe CO2 plumes from 60 cities and industrial regions over China and quantify their CO2 emissions from the OCO-2 observations, which add up to a total of 1.6 Gt CO2 yr−1 that account for 17 % of mainland China's annual emissions. The number of cities whose emissions are constrained by OCO-2 here is three to ten times larger than previous studies that only focused on large cities and power plants in different locations around the world. Our satellite-based emission estimates are broadly consistent with the independent values from the detailed China's emission inventory MEIC, but are more different from those of two widely used global gridded emission datasets (i.e., EDGAR and ODIAC), especially for the emission estimates for the individual cities. These results demonstrate some skill in the satellite-based emission quantification for isolated source clusters with the OCO-2, despite the sparse sampling of this instrument not designed for this purpose. This skill can be improved by future satellite missions that will have a denser spatial sampling of surface emitting areas, which will come soon in the early 2020s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]