Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills

Abstract

As atmospheric methane concentrations increase at record pace, it is critical to identify individual emission sources with  high  potential  for  mitigation.  Here,  we  leverage  the  synergy  between  satellite  instruments  with  different  spatiotemporal coverage and resolution to detect and quantify emissions from individual landfills. We use the global surveying Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) to identify large emission hot spots and then zoom in with high-resolution target-mode observations from the GHGSat instrument suite to identify the respon-sible facilities and characterize their emissions. Using this approach, we detect and analyze strongly emitting landfills (3 to 29 t hour−1) in Buenos Aires, Delhi, Lahore, and Mumbai. Using TROPOMI data in an inversion, we find that city-level emissions are 1.4 to 2.6 times larger than reported in commonly used emission inventories and that the landfills contribute 6 to 50% of those emissions. Our work demonstrates how complementary satellites enable global detection, identification, and monitoring of methane superemitters at the facility level.

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