Article
Estimating methane emissions from biological and fossil-fuel sources in the San Francisco Bay Area
Geophysical Research Letters
(2017)
Abstract
We present the first sector-specific analysis of methane (CH4) emissions from the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) using CH4 and volatile organic compound (VOC) measurements from six sites during September – December 2015. We apply a hierarchical Bayesian inversion to separate the biological from fossil-fuel (natural gas and petroleum) sources using the measurements of CH4 and selected VOCs, a source-specific 1 km CH4 emission model, and an atmospheric transport model. We estimate that SFBA CH4 emissions are 166–289 Gg CH4/yr (at 95% confidence), 1.3–2.3 times higher than a recent inventory with much of the underestimation from landfill. Including the VOCs, 82 ± 27% of total posterior median CH4 emissions are biological and 17 ± 3% fossil fuel, where landfill and natural gas dominate the biological and fossil-fuel CH4 of prior emissions, respectively.
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 16, 2017
DOI
10.1002/2016GL071794
Publisher Statement
© Copyright 2016 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.
This article was published in Geophysical Research Letters, volume 44, issue 1, 2017, and can be found online at the following link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071794.
Citation Information
Seongeun Jeong, Xinguang Cui, Donald R. Blake, Ben Miller, et al.. "Estimating methane emissions from biological and fossil-fuel sources in the San Francisco Bay Area" Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 44 Iss. 1 (2017) p. 486 - 495 ISSN: 0094-8276 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/craig_clements/36/