Recent improvements in mobile greenhouse gas analyzers and what they have done for top-down emissions verification

Abstract:

Recent advances in in-situ measurements of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O along with their isotopes and other associated tracers on moving platforms have opened the door to significant opportunities for directly measuring emissions of greenhouse gases from distributed and single-point emitters. By coupling advances in the stability and portability of these measurements with new techniques for sampling trace gases, it has been possible to advance our understanding of the processes that contribute most to greenhouse gas emissions, to understand the distribution of these emissions in space and magnitude, as well as to quantify the regional impact of these emissions. These advances can best be illustrated through the recent focus on the CH₄ emissions from oil and gas production in the US and the deployment of in-situ measurements on aircraft, automobiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Although these recent advances have significantly improved our ability to verify emission inventory estimates of CH₄ emissions there are still gaps in our ability to extract multi-species information from point-source emissions and our ability to fully utilize the smaller UAV platforms that have reduced payload capacity and power.