Joshua Benmergui: MethaneSAT and MethaneAIR

Reducing methane emissions is the most feasible and effective way to mitigate near-term global warming. The International Energy Agency estimates that the global oil and gas production industry can reduce its methane emissions by 50% with zero net cost. That’s why methane is a focus of the Environmental Defense Fund’s climate research and advocacy. In 2012 EDF kicked off a research series to improve the detection and quantification of methane emissions. In 2023 these efforts will culminate in the launch of MethaneSAT by EDF subsidiary MethaneSAT, LLC*. This talk will discuss MethaneSAT and its airborne precursor MethaneAIR, including their instruments, objectives, data products, and results from completed MethaneAIR flights. MethaneSAT is a diffraction grating spectrometer mounted to an agile satellite bus that will fly in a sun-synchronous low-Earth polar orbit. It will scan up to 35 area targets per day, each covering 200 x 200 km, with a native resolution of 100 x 400 m at nadir and a precision of up to 3 ppb over 1 km2. MethaneSAT’s primary mission is to characterize methane emissions from 80% of global oil and gas production. Its secondary scientific priorities include characterizing agricultural, coal mine, wetland, landfill, and urban methane emissions. MethaneSAT data products will be available to the public free of charge. MethaneSAT’s airborne precursor mission, MethaneAIR, flew 13 successful research flights aboard the NCAR GV research plane in 2019, 2021 and 2022. These included the observation of controlled release experiments and “zamboni pattern” area observations over large swaths of the Permian and Uinta Basins. Beginning in 2023 MethaneAIR will fly regular bi-weekly flights over US targets.

*MethaneSAT, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Environmental Defense Fund, Incorporated, a leading international nonprofit organization. Operating in more than 30 countries, EDF links science, economics, law, and innovative private-sector partnerships to create transformational solutions to the world’s most serious environmental problems.

Bio

Joshua Benmergui is a Senior Science Engineer for MethaneSAT working for the Environmental Defense Fund. He designed and wrote the software that plans MethaneSAT’s activities, including science, calibration, and downlink maneuvers. He also works on MethaneSAT and MethaneAIR’s emissions detection and quantification systems. He holds a BSc and MSc from the University of Waterloo in Canada and a PhD from Harvard University.