Document Type

Article

Publication Date

January 2017

Publication Title

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

44

Issue Number

1

First Page

486

Last Page

495

DOI

10.1002/2016GL071794

Disciplines

Atmospheric Sciences | Climate | Meteorology | Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology

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.

Comments

© 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.

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