262,181 research outputs found
Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico
Full text link[EN] Mitigation of methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction, processing, and transport is one of the most effective ways to slow global warming. Satellite-based methods are instrumental for the detection, characterization, and quantification of this type of emissions. However, despite the rapid development of satellite-based methane plume detection methods for terrestrial surfaces, there is still an important observational gap with respect to offshore oil and gas infrastructure, which accounts for roughly 30% of global production. In this work, we have used observations from the WorldView-3 and Landsat 8 satellite missions in a particular observation-illumination geometry to image offshore methane plumes from space. The study site is an offshore oil and gas production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of Campeche, in one of Mexico¿s major oil producing fields. Our data suggest that the platform vented high volumes of methane during a 17-day ultra-emission event, amounting to 0.04 ± 0.01 Tg of methane (equivalent to 3.36 million tons of carbon dioxide) released to the atmosphere if integrated over time. Our results illustrate how satellites can detect methane plumes from offshore infrastructure, which represents a significant breakthrough in the monitoring of industrial methane emissions from space.The authors thank the European Space Agency and European Space Imaging for access to WV3 data through the third-party mission plan. Javier Gorrono is funded by an ESA Living Planet Fellowship (ESA Contract No. 4000130980/20/I-NS). Authors Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate, Javier Gorron~o, and Luis Guanter received funding from ESA contract 4000134929. Elena Sanchez-Garcia is thanked for her support for the selection of the study site, and Maxar Technologies, Inc., for the acquisition of WV3 SWIR data for this study.Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Zavala-Araiza, D.; Guanter-Palomar, LM. (2022). Satellites Detect a Methane Ultra-emission Event from an Offshore Platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental Science & Technology Letters. 9(6):520-525. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.2c00225S5205259
Mapping methane point emissions with the PRISMA spaceborne imaging spectrometer
Full text linkThe authors would like to thank the Italian Space Agency, and inparticular Ettore Lopinto (Mission Director) , for the PRISMA data used in this work. Markus Foote (University of Utah) is also thanked for making the MAG1C code available to the scientific community. Javier Gorrono is funded by the ESA Living Planet Fellowship. PRISMA data can be accessed through the Data Access tab of PRISMA's website.1Guanter-Palomar, LM.; Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Sánchez-García, E.; Cusworth, DH.; Varon, DJ.; Cogliati, S.... (2021). Mapping methane point emissions with the PRISMA spaceborne imaging spectrometer. Remote Sensing of Environment. 265:1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112671S11426
Satellite Characterization of Methane Point Sources by Offshore Oil and Gas PlatForms
Full text link[EN] Reducing methane, which is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, has been shown to be a good opportunity to mitigate global warming in the short to medium time. Remote sensing is nowadays a useful tool for the identification of anthropogenic emission from methane point sources. In this work, we will demonstrate the capability of high-resolution satellites to detect point sources of methane. Specifically, this study focuses on emissions from offshore oil and gas platforms using sun-glint mode acquisitions, as these platforms represent a significant fraction of total emissions and pose a challenging issue due to the low radiation from water.This study was funded by the HiResCH4 SA Contract 4000135294/21/I-DT-lr CCN, FUTURE EO-1 EO SCIENCE FOR SOCIETY PERMANENTLY OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS.Valverde, A.; Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Roger-Juan, J.; Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Guanter-Palomar, LM. (2024). Satellite Characterization of Methane Point Sources by Offshore Oil and Gas PlatForms. Environmental Sciences Proceedings. 28(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/environsciproc2023028022S28
Satellites Detect Abatable Super-Emissions in One of the World¿s Largest Methane Hotspot Regions
Full text link[EN] Reduction of fossil fuel-related methane emissions has been identified as an essential means for climate change mitigation, but emission source identification remains elusive for most oil and gas production basins in the world. We combine three complementary satellite data sets to survey single methane emission sources on the west coast of Turkmenistan, one of the largest methane hotspots in the world. We found 29 different emitters, with emission rates >1800 kg/h, active in the 2017¿2020 time period, although older satellite data show that this type of emission has been occurring for decades. We find that all sources are linked to extraction fields mainly dedicated to crude oil production, where 24 of them are inactive flares venting gas. The analysis of time series suggests a causal relationship between the decrease in flaring and the increase in venting. At the regional level, 2020 shows a substantial increase in the number of methane plume detections concerning previous years. Our results suggest that these large venting point sources represent a key mitigation opportunity as they emanate from human-controlled facilities, and that new satellite methods promise a revolution in the detection and monitoring of methane point emissions worldwide.The authors thank the team that realized the TROPOMI instrument and its data products, consisting of the partnership between Airbus Defense and Space Netherlands, KNMI, SRON, and TNO, commissioned by NSO and ESA. Sentinel-5 Precursor is part of the EU Copernicus program, Copernicus (modified) Sentinel-5P data (2018-2020) have been used. We thank the Sentinel Hub service for providing the EO Browser service. Thanks to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) for providing data about the O&G fields of the study area, and the Carbon Limits group for contributing to the verification of the emission sources. We thank the Italian Space Agency for the PRISMA data used in this work. Dr. Yongguang Zhang from the University of Nanjing is also thanked for his support to get access to ZY1 AHSI data, and Dr. Javier Gorrono from Universitat Politecnica de Valencia for his assistance in the uncertainty estimations. Authors Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate and Luis Guanter received funding from ESA Contract 4000134929.Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Guanter-Palomar, LM.; Joannes D. Maasakkers; Daniel Zavala-Araiza; Ilse Aben (2022). Satellites Detect Abatable Super-Emissions in One of the World¿s Largest Methane Hotspot Regions. Environmental Science & Technology (Online). 56(4):2143-2152. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04873S2143215256
Detection of offshore oil and gas platforms and associated methane emissions using satellites
Full text link[EN] Offshore oil and gas platforms (OOGPs) are key structures used to drill, extract, and process oil and natural gas. Accurate and comprehensive information on the location and operational status of OOGPs is essential for evaluating their potential environmental impacts and formulating effective marine management policies. In this work, several OOGPs and methane emissions are identified spanning long time series with satellite-based imaging spectrometers and SAR instruments. Our findings highlight the potential of satellites to monitor offshore infrastructure and enhance understanding of the marine environmental impacts of OOGPs.The authors thank the Copernicus Programme of the European Space Agency for the free provision of Sentinel-1 data, and the Google Earth Engine platform for enabling efficient data preprocessing and access. We also express our sincere appreciation to the DLR Space Agency, Germany, Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) data used in this work, respectively.Si, L.;Zhou, Shanyu;Irakulis-Loitxate, I.;Roger-Juan, Javier;Gorroño-Viñegla, Javier;Valverde, Adriana;Guanter-Palomar, Luis María (2025). Detection of offshore oil and gas platforms and associated methane emissions using satellites. En Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València, (pp. 8-12). https://doi.org/10.4995/CiGeo2025.2025.19877OCS81
Mapping methane plumes at very high spatial resolution with the WorldView-3 satellite
Full text link[EN] The detection of methane emissions from industrial activities can help enable effective climate change mitigation strategies. These industrial emissions, such as from oil and gas (O&G) extraction and coal mining, typically occur as large plumes of highly concentrated gas. Different satellite missions have recently shown the potential to map such methane plumes from space. In this work, we report on the promising potential of the WorldView-3 (WV-3) satellite mission for methane mapping. This relies on its unique very high spatial resolution (up to 3.7¿m) data in the shortwave infrared part of the spectrum, which is complemented by a good spectral sampling of the methane absorption feature at 2300¿nm and a high signal to noise ratio. The proposed retrieval methodology is based on the calculation of methane concentration enhancements from pixel-wise estimates of methane transmittance at WV-3 SWIR band 7 (2235¿2285¿nm), which is positioned at a highly-sensitive methane absorption region. A sensitivity analysis based on end-to-end simulations has helped to understand retrieval errors and detection limits. The results have shown the good performance of WV-3 for methane mapping, especially over bright and homogeneous areas. The potential of WV-3 for methane mapping has been further tested with real data, which has led to the detection of 26 independent point emissions over different methane hotspot regions, such as O&G extraction fields in Algeria and Turkmenistan, and the Shanxi coal mining region in China. In particular, the detection of very small leaks (<¿100¿kg¿h¿1) from oil pipelines in Turkmenistan shows the unique capability of WV-3 for mapping industrial methane emissions from space. The mission includes pointing capabilities that allow for a daily revisit over these oil pipelines or other critical infrastructure.This research has been supported by the ESA (contract no. 4000134929) and the ESA Living Planet Fellowship (ESA contract no. 4000130980/20/I-NS).Sánchez-García, E.; Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Varon, DJ.; Guanter-Palomar, LM. (2022). Mapping methane plumes at very high spatial resolution with the WorldView-3 satellite. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. 15(6):1657-1674. https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-1657-2022S16571674156Borchardt, J., Gerilowski, K., Krautwurst, S., Bovensmann, H., Thorpe, A. K., Thompson, D. R., Frankenberg, C., Miller, C. E., Duren, R. M., and Burrows, J. P.: Detection and quantification of CH4 plumes using the WFM-DOAS retrieval on AVIRIS-NG hyperspectral data, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 1267–1291, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-1267-2021, 2021.Cusworth, D. H., Jacob, D. J., Varon, D. J., Chan Miller, C., Liu, X., Chance, K., Thorpe, A. K., Duren, R. M., Miller, C. E., Thompson, D. R., Frankenberg, C., Guanter, L., and Randles, C. A.: Potential of next-generation imaging spectrometers to detect and quantify methane point sources from space, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 12, 5655–5668, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-5655-2019, 2019.Cusworth, D. H., Duren, R. M., Thorpe, A. K., Tseng, E., Thompson, D., Guha, A., Newman, S., Foster, K. T., and Miller, C. E.: Using remote sensing to detect, validate, and quantify methane emissions from California solid waste operations, Environ. Res. Lett., 15, 054012, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7b99, 2020.Cusworth, D. H., Duren, R. M., Thorpe, A. K., Olson-duvall, W., Heckler, J., Chapman, J. W., Eastwood, M. L., Helmlinger, M. C., Green, R. O., Asner, G. P., Dennison, P. E., and Miller, C. E.: Intermittency of Large Methane Emitters in the Permian Basin, Environ. Sci. Technol. 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High-Resolution Methane Mapping With the EnMAP Satellite Imaging Spectroscopy Mission
No full text[EN] Methane (CH4) mitigation from anthropogenic
sources such as in the production and transport of fossil fuels
has been found as one of the most promising strategies to
curb global warming in the near future. Satellite-based imaging
spectrometers have demonstrated to be well-suited to detect
and quantify these emissions at high spatial resolution, which
allows the attribution of plumes to sources. The PRecursore
IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa (PRISMA) satellite mission (ASI, Italy) has been successfully used for this application,
and the recently launched Environmental Mapping and Analysis
Program (EnMAP) mission (DLR/GFZ, Potsdam, Germany)
presents similar spatial and spectral characteristics (30-m spatial resolution, 30-km swath, about 8-nm spectral sampling
at 2300 nm). In this work, we investigate the potential and
limitations of EnMAP for CH4 remote sensing, using PRISMA as
a benchmark to deduce its added value. We analyze the spectral
and radiometric performance of EnMAP in the 2300-nm region
used for CH4 retrievals acquired using the matched-filter method.
Our results show that in arid areas, EnMAP spectral resolution
is about 2.7 nm finer and the signal-to-noise ratio values are
approximately twice as large, which leads to an improvement in
retrieval performance. Several EnMAP examples of plumes from
different sources around the world with flux rate values ranging
from 1 to 20 t/h are illustrated. We show plumes from sectors such
as onshore oil and gas (O&G) and coal mining, but also from
more challenging sectors such as landfills and offshore O&G.This work was supported in part by the High-resolution methane mapping with hyper- and multispectral
data (HiResCH4) ESA Contract under Grant 4000135294/21/I-DT-lr (CCN), and in part by Future EO-1 EO Science for Society Permanently Open Call for Proposals.Roger-Juan, J.; Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Valverde, A.; Chabrillat, S.; Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Brell, M.; Guanter-Palomar, LM. (2024). High-Resolution Methane Mapping With the EnMAP Satellite Imaging Spectroscopy Mission. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. 62. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2024.3352403S6
Understanding the potential of Sentinel-2 for monitoring methane point emissions
Full text link[EN] The use of satellite instruments to detect and quantify methane emissions from fossil fuel production activities is highly beneficial to support climate change mitigation. Different hyperspectral and multispectral satellite sensors have recently shown potential to detect and quantify point-source emissions from space. The Sentinel-2 (S2) mission, despite its limited spectral design, supports the detection of large emissions with global coverage and high revisit frequency thanks to coarse spectral coverage of methane absorption lines in the shortwave infrared. Validation of S2 methane retrieval algorithms is instrumental in accelerating the development of a systematic and global monitoring system for methane point sources. Here, we develop a benchmarking framework for such validation. We first develop a methodology to generate simulated S2 datasets including methane point-source plumes. These benchmark datasets have been created for scenes in three oil and gas basins (Hassi Messaoud, Algeria; Korpeje, Turkmenistan; Permian Basin, USA) under different scene heterogeneity conditions and for simulated methane plumes with different spatial distributions. We use the simulated methane plumes to validate the retrieval for different flux rate levels and define a minimum detection threshold for each case study. The results suggest that for homogeneous and temporally invariant surfaces, the detection limit of the proposed S2 methane retrieval ranges from 1000 to 2000¿kg¿h¿1, whereas for areas with large surface heterogeneity and temporal variations, the retrieval can only detect plumes in excess of 5000¿kg¿h¿1. The different sources of uncertainty in the flux rate estimates have also been examined. Dominant quantification errors are either wind-related or plume mask-related, depending on the surface type. Uncertainty in wind speed, both in the 10¿m wind (U10) and in mapping U10 to the effective wind (Ueff) driving plume transport, is the dominant source of error for quantifying individual plumes in homogeneous scenes. For heterogeneous and temporally variant scenes, the surface structure underlying the methane plume affects the plume masking and can become a dominant source of uncertainty.Javier Gorrono is funded by the ESA Living Planet fellowship (ESA contract no. 4000130980/20/I-NS). This project has been funded by the ESA AO/1-10468/20/I-FvO-FUTURE EO-1 EO SCIENCE FOR SOCIETY PERMANENTLY OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS. Project web: https://hiresch4.upv.es/ (last access: 3 October 2022).Gorroño-Viñegla, J.; Varon, DJ.; Irakulis-Loitxate, I.; Guanter-Palomar, LM. (2023). Understanding the potential of Sentinel-2 for monitoring methane point emissions. 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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Exploiting the entire near-infrared spectral range to improve the detection of methane plumes with high-resolution imaging spectrometers
Full text linkRemote sensing emerges as an important tool for the detection of methane plumes emitted by so-called point sources, which are common in the energy sector (e.g., oil and gas extraction and coal mining activities). In particular, satellite imaging spectroscopy missions covering the shortwave infrared part of the solar spectrum are very effective for this application. These instruments sample the methane absorption features at the spectral regions around 1700 and 2300 nm, which enables the retrieval of methane concentration enhancements per pixel. Data-driven retrieval methods, in particular those based on the matched filter concept, are widely used to produce maps of methane concentration enhancements from imaging spectroscopy data. Using these maps enables the detection of plumes and the subsequent identification of active sources. However, retrieval artifacts caused by particular surface components may sometimes appear as false plumes or disturbing elements in the methane maps, which complicates the identification of real plumes. In this work, we use a matched filter that exploits a wide spectral window (1000–2500 nm) instead of the usual 2100–2450 nm window with the aim of reducing the occurrence of retrieval artifacts and background noise. This enables a greater ability to discriminate between surface elements and methane. The improvement in plume detection is evaluated through an analysis derived from both simulated data and real data from areas including active point sources, such as the oil and gas (O&G) industry from San Joaquin Valley (US) and the coal mines from the Shanxi region (China). We use datasets from the Precursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa (PRISMA) and the Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) satellite imaging spectrometer missions and from the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer – Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) instrument. We find that the interference with atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor is generally almost negligible, while co-emission or overlapping of these trace gases with methane plumes leads to a reduction in the retrieved concentration values. Attenuation will also occur in the case of methane emissions situated above surface structures that are associated with retrieval artifacts. The results show that the new approach is an optimal trade-off between the reduction in background noise and retrieval artifacts. This is illustrated by a comprehensive analysis in a PRISMA dataset with 15 identified plumes, where the output mask from an automatic detection algorithm shows an important reduction in the number of clusters not related to CH4 emissions.</p
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