Methane Plume Detection and Quantification Intercomparison Analysis Based on EMIT Measurements

Published

February 11, 2026

Author(s)

Annmarie Eldering, Luis Guanter, Javier Roger, Joannes Maasakkers, Xin Zhang, Daniel Cusworth, Alana Ayasse, Katherine Howell, Daniel Varon, Jason McKeever, Dylan Jervis, Andrew Thorpe, Marc Watine-Guiu, Alba Lorente, Gonzalo Mateo-Garcia, Itziar Irakulis Loitxate, Red Willow Coleman, Jay Fahlen, Alexis Groshenry, Julian Akani-Guery, Quentin Peyle, Dylan Ellett

Abstract

This report is about an intercomparison experiment that was performed to compare the methane plume detection and quantification based on EMIT remote sensing measurements. The experiment consisted of eight teams analyzing four measurement scenes from EMIT and reporting back results such as plume origins, plume outlines, estimated emission rates, and uncertainties. Comparisons of results across the team are reported, as well as the aggregate statistics, such as box and whisker plots of the emission rates, scatter of the plume origins, and coefficient of variance (COV) for the results. The small size of the datasets limits the generalizability of the results. One key outcome of this work was the development of methods for comparison of results, including application of rotation to plume origins to evaluate in the context of the wind field. We also tested the impact of holding variables constants, such as the wind speed. In this report, we show that the emission rate estimates have COVs of 30% to 50% in the majority of cases, and using the same wind speed across all teams did not drastically change this. The plume origin analysis showed that the cross wind spread of plume origin results was 50 m to 110 m in all but one case, and across wind was 60 m to 120 m in 13 of the 15 cases. The EMIT footprint is 60m, so the variations were roughly 1 to 2 pixels. In future work, we will build on the methods developed here and include measurements over controlled releases where the bias of the emission estimates can be assessed.

Citation

Data Foundation

Report Number

8586

Pub Weblink

https://datafoundation.org/news/reports/812/812-Methane-Plume-Detection-and-Qua…

Pub Type

Websites

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.15868/socialsector.52028

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Keywords

Methane plumes, remote sensing: hyperspectral, emissions quantification

Citation

Eldering, A. , Guanter, L. , Roger, J. , Maasakkers, J. , Zhang, X. , Cusworth, D. , Ayasse, A. , Howell, K. , Varon, D. , McKeever, J. , Jervis, D. , Thorpe, A. , Watine-Guiu, M. , Lorente, A. , Mateo-Garcia, G. , Irakulis Loitxate, I. , Coleman, R. , Fahlen, J. , Groshenry, A. , Akani-Guery, J. , Peyle, Q. and Ellett, D. (2026), Methane Plume Detection and Quantification Intercomparison Analysis Based on EMIT Measurements, Data Foundation, [online], https://doi.org/10.15868/socialsector.52028, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960552, https://datafoundation.org/news/reports/812/812-Methane-Plume-Detection-and-Quantification-Intercomparison-Analysis-Based-on-EMIT-Measurements- (Accessed July 31, 2026)

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