Updated Global Fuel Exploitation Inventory (GFEI) for methane emissions from...

Scarpelli, T. R., D. J. Jacob, S. Grossman, X. Lu, Z. Qu, M. P. Sulprizio, Y. Zhang, F. Reuland, D. Gordon, and J. Worden (2022), Updated Global Fuel Exploitation Inventory (GFEI) for methane emissions from the oil, gas, and coal sectors: evaluation with inversions of atmospheric methane observations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 3235-3249, doi:10.5194/acp-22-3235-2022.
Abstract: 

We present an updated version of the Global Fuel Exploitation Inventory (GFEI) for methane emissions and evaluate it with results from global inversions of atmospheric methane observations from satellite (GOSAT) and in situ platforms (GLOBALVIEWplus). GFEI allocates methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal sectors and subsectors to a 0.1◦ × 0.1◦ grid by using the national emissions reported by individual countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and mapping them to infrastructure locations. Our updated GFEI v2 gives annual emissions for 2010–2019 that incorporate the most recent UNFCCC national reports, new oil–gas well locations, and improved spatial distribution of emissions for Canada, Mexico, and China. Russia’s oil–gas emissions in its latest UNFCCC report (4.1 Tg a−1 for 2019) decrease by 83 % compared to its previous report while Nigeria’s latest reported oil–gas emissions (3.1 Tg a−1 for 2016) increase 7-fold compared to its previous report, reflecting changes in assumed emission factors. Global gas emissions in GFEI v2 show little net change from 2010 to 2019 while oil emissions decrease and coal emissions slightly increase. Global emissions from the oil, gas, and coal sectors in GFEI v2 (26, 22, and 33 Tg a−1 , respectively in 2019) are lower than the EDGAR v6 inventory (32, 44, and 37 Tg a−1 in 2018) and lower than the IEA inventory for oil and gas (38 and 43 Tg a−1 in 2019), though there is considerable variability between inventories for individual countries. GFEI v2 estimates higher emissions by country than the Climate TRACE inventory, with notable exceptions in Russia, the US, and the Middle East where TRACE is up to an order of magnitude higher than GFEI v2. Inversion results using GFEI as a prior estimate confirm the lower Russian emissions in the latest UNFCCC report but find that Nigeria’s reported UNFCCC emissions are too high. Oil–gas emissions are generally underestimated by the national inventories for the highest emitting countries including the US, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Canada, and Turkmenistan. Offshore emissions tend to be overestimated. Our updated GFEI v2 provides a platform for future evaluation of national emission inventories reported to the UNFCCC

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Research Program: 
Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Program (CCEP)
Mission: 
CMS