Atmospheric methane emissions correlate with natural gas consumption from residential and commercial sectors in Los Angeles
Abstract
Legislation in the State of California mandates reductions in emissions of short‐lived climate pollutants of 40% from 2013 levels by 2030 for CH_4. Identification of the sector(s) responsible for these emissions and their temporal and spatial variability is a key step in achieving these goals. Here, we determine the emissions of CH_4 in Los Angeles from 2011–2017 using a mountaintop remote sensing mapping spectrometer. We show that the pattern of CH_4 emissions contains both seasonal and nonseasonal contributions. We find that the seasonal component peaks in the winter and is correlated (R^2 = 0.58) with utility natural gas consumption from the residential and commercial sectors and not from the industrial and gas‐fired power plant sectors. The nonseasonal component is (22.9 ± 1.4) Gg CH_4/month. If the seasonal correlation is causal, about (1.4 ± 0.1)% of the commercial and residential natural gas consumption in Los Angeles is released into the atmosphere.
Additional Information
© 2019 American Geophysical Union. Received 19 APR 2019; Accepted 10 JUL 2019; Accepted article online 15 JUL 2019. This research was supported by NIST, CARB, and NASA. We gratefully acknowledge discussions with M. Fischer, G. Heath, J. Hedelius, M. Weitz, and V. Camobreco. L.H. thanks the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech for fellowship support. We thank A. Andrews and E. Dlugokencky for providing the NOAA flask measurements at Mt. Wilson Observatory (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2019). CLARS‐FTS data are available from the NASA Megacities Project (https://megacities.jpl.nasa.gov). The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. L. H., Z. C. Z., T. P., C. W., and S. S. carried out the data acquisition and analysis, J. L. and K. G. provided the Hestia inventory, S. S., L. H., and Z. C. Z. wrote the paper, and all authors contributed to the analysis and discussion of the results. The authors declare no competing financial interests.Attached Files
Published - He_et_al-2019-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl59321-sup-0001-2019gl083400-s01.docx
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 97168
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190716-102712163
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
- California Air Resources Board
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Resnick Sustainability Institute
- Created
-
2019-07-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Resnick Sustainability Institute, Astronomy Department, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences