Identification

Title

Airborne flux measurements of methane and volatile organic compounds over the Haynesville and Marcellus shale gas production regions

Abstract

Emissions of methane (CH₄) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from oil and gas production may have large impacts on air quality and climate change. Methane and VOCs were measured over the Haynesville and Marcellus shale gas plays on board the National Center for Atmospheric Research C-130 and NOAA WP-3D research aircraft in June-July of 2013. We used an eddy covariance technique to measure in situ fluxes of CH₄ and benzene from both C-130 flights with high-resolution data (10 Hz) and WP-3D flights with low-resolution data (1 Hz). Correlation (R = 0.65) between CH₄ and benzene fluxes was observed when flying over shale gas operations, and the enhancement ratio of fluxes was consistent with the corresponding concentration observations. Fluxes calculated by the eddy covariance method show agreement with a mass balance approach within their combined uncertainties. In general, CH₄ fluxes in the shale gas regions follow a lognormal distribution, with some deviations for relatively large fluxes (>10 µg m⁻² s⁻¹). Statistical analysis of the fluxes shows that a small number of facilities (i.e., ~10%) are responsible for up to ~40% of the total CH₄ emissions in the two regions. We show that the airborne eddy covariance method can also be applied in some circumstances when meteorological conditions do not favor application of the mass balance method. We suggest that the airborne eddy covariance method is a reliable alternative and complementary analysis method to estimate emissions from oil and gas extraction.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7cz38ck

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-06-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact