Aldis Elfarsdottir

All Publications

• Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills SCIENCE ADVANCES Maasakkers, J. D., Varon, D. J., Elfarsdottir, A., McKeever, J., Jervis, D., Mahapatra, G., Pandey, S., Lorente, A., Borsdorff, T., Foorthuis, L. R., Schuit, B. J., Tol, P., van Kempen, T. A., van Hees, R., Aben, I. 2022; 8 (32): eabn9683

  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 responsible 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.

  View details for DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abn9683

  View details for Web of Science ID 000841491100015

  View details for PubMedID 35947659

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC9365275