Understanding Methane Point Source Emissions

About the role

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Description

Methane budgets derived from bottom-up data sets are often in strong disagreement with top-down estimates and the persistent lack of process based knowledge is exemplified by the ongoing scientific discussion on both the hiatus in the atmospheric growth rate in the early 21st century as well as the unexpected rise starting in 2007. Emissions and process attribution remain highly uncertain but are needed to resolve key elements of uncertainty in carbon cycle science, generate accurate greenhouse gas inventories and inform emission mitigation decisions. A key factor is that regional top-down emissions estimates cannot discriminate source categories and thereby attribute fluxes to specific processes or sources. One way of solving this knowledge gap is by isolating methane point sources from regional totals. We are developing a tiered methane observing system that will identify and quantify methane fluxes on local to national scales. This project focuses on the application of breakthrough airborne and satellite methane remote sensing technologies - including the ability to conduct large area surveys and image methane plumes at ~1 to 10 m scales with high detection sensitivity - to the point source challenge, and more generally to understanding and characterizing methane budgets across multiple scales. Recent work includes studies of emissions from the Four Corners, NM area, California‘s San Joaquin Valley, and the Los Angeles basin, including the recent Aliso Canyon natural gas blowout.

References

• Brandt, R. et al., Science, doi:10.1126/science.1247045 (2014)
• Duren, RM, C. E. Miller, Measuring the Carbon Emissions of Megacities, Nature Climate Change 2, 560-562 (2012). doi:10.1038/nclimate1629.
• Frankenberg, C., Thorpe, A.K., Thompson, D.R., Hulley, G., Kort, E. A., Vance, N., Borchard, J., Krings, T., Gerilowski, K., Sweeney, C., Conley, S., Bue, B.D., Aubrey, A.D., Hook, S.J., Green, R.O. (2016). Airborne remote measurements reveal fat-tail methane sources in the Four Corners region. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in press.
• Hulley, G.C., R. Duren, S.J. Hook, F. Hopkins, N. Vance, et al. (2016), High spatial resolution imaging of methane and other trace gas sources with the airborne Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer, Atmos. Meas. Tech.(2016), doi:10.5194/amt-2016-8
• Kuai, L., G. Hulley, J. Worden, F. M. Hopkins, King-Fai Li, C. E. Miller, S. Hook, R. Duren, A. Aubrey (2016), Characterization of anthropogenic methane plumes with the Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES): a retrieval method and error analysis, Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., doi:10.5194/amt-2015-40
• Thompson, D. R., Thorpe, A. K., Frankenberg, C., Green, R. O., Duren, R., Guanter, L., Hollstein, A., Middleton, E., Ong, L., Ungar, S. (2016). Space-based remote imaging spectroscopy of the Aliso Canyon CH4 super-emitter. Geophysical Research Letters, 1944-8007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL069079
• Thorpe, A. K., Frankenberg, C., Roberts, D. A. (2014). Retrieval techniques for airborne imaging of methane concentrations using high spatial and moderate spectral resolution: Application to AVIRIS. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 7(1), 491-506. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/amt-7-491-2014

Location

Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, California

Field of Science

Earth Science

Advisors

Charles Miller
Charles.E.Miller@jpl.nasa.gov
818-393-6294

Qualifications

Successful candidates will have expertise in atmospheric physics and chemistry, carbon cycle science, airborne instruments, atmospheric remote sensing, regional scale CO2 flux inversions, or the equivalent. They will join the active JPL Carbon Cycle Science group and have opportunities to interact with colleagues at Caltech.

Skills

Remote sensing data and/or synthesis of diverse data sets to understand and attribute methane emissions across economic sectors.

Benefits

These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Pay

N/A

Schedule

N/A