Publication Date:
2018-03-20
Description:
Urban greenhouse gas (GHG) flux estimation with atmospheric measurements and modeling, i.e. the ‘top-down’ approach, can potentially support GHG emission reduction policies by assessing trends in surface fluxes and detecting anomalies from bottom-up inventories. Aircraft-collected GHG observations also have the potential to help quantify point-source emissions that may not be adequately sampled by fixed surface tower-based atmospheric observing systems. Here, we estimate CH 4 emissions from a known point source, the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak in Los Angeles, CA from October 2015–February 2016, using atmospheric inverse models with airborne CH 4 observations from twelve flights ≈4 km downwind of the leak and surface sensitivities from a mesoscale atmospheric transport model. This leak event has been well-quantified previously using various methods by the California Air Resources Board, thereby providing high confidence in the mass-balance leak rate estimate...
Print ISSN:
1748-9318
Electronic ISSN:
1748-9326
Topics:
Biology
,
Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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