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Methane Emissions Computed Including Explicit Observational Uncertainty Reveal Bias, Large Number of Unreliable Pixels
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  • Bo Zheng,
  • Jason Blake Cohen,
  • Lingxiao Lu,
  • Wei Hu,
  • Pravash Tiwari,
  • Man Sing Wong,
  • Kai Qin
Bo Zheng
China University of Mining and Technology
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Jason Blake Cohen
China University of Mining and Technology

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Lingxiao Lu
China University of Mining and Technology
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Wei Hu
China University of Mining and Technology
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Pravash Tiwari
China University of Mining and Technology
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Man Sing Wong
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
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Kai Qin
China University of Mining and Technology
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Abstract

This study quantifies methane emissions in clean areas of Western China using TROPOMI XCH4 observations and a mass conserving method, while explicitly considering observational uncertainty. All resulting physically unrealistic emissions values are successfully identified and filtered using a mixture of a threshold-based approach and a stochastic approach focused on the impacts of the pixel-by-pixel and day-by-day XCH4 uncertainty. A resulting minimum emission retrieval value of 0.5-1.8 μg/m²/s is obtained, which is lower than existing minimum thresholds using TROPOMI. Additionally, our results demonstrate that there is a 5% emissions bias due to the non-linearity of the gradient term when the XCH4 contains a 10% error. This method does not randomly remove negative values and retain positive values, therefore providing robust and reliable quantification of emissions under conditions of data uncertainty.
16 Jul 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
17 Jul 2024Published in ESS Open Archive