Daily detection and quantification of methane leaks using Sentinel-3: a tiered satellite observation approach with Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-5p

Abstract

The twin Sentinel-3 satellites have multi-band radiometers which observe in methane-sensitive shortwave infrared bands with daily global coverage and 500 m ground pixel resolution. We investigate the methane observation capability of Sentinel-3 and how its coverage-resolution combination fits between Sentinel-5p and Sentinel-2 within a tiered observation approach for methane leak monitoring. Sentinel-5p measures methane with high precision and daily global coverage, allowing worldwide leak detection but with a coarse spatial resolution of 7 km × 5.5 km. The Sentinel-2 twin satellites have multi-band instruments that can identify source locations of major leaks (> 1 t/h) with their methane observations of 20 m resolution under favorable observational conditions, but these satellites lack daily global coverage.We show that methane enhancements can be retrieved from the shortwave infrared band measurements of Sentinel-3. We report the lowest emission detections by Sentinel-3 in the 8-20 t/h range, depending on location and wind conditions. We demonstrate Sentinel-3's capability of identification and monitoring of methane leaks using two case studies. Near Moscow, Sentinel-3 shows that two major short-term leaks, separated by 30 km, occurred simultaneously at a gas pipeline and appear as a single methane plume in Sentinel-5p data. For another Sentinel-5p leak detection near the Hassi Messaoud oil/gas field in Algeria, Sentinel-3 identifies the leaking facility emitting continuously for 6 days, and Sentinel-2 pinpoints the source of the leak at an oil/gas well. Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 also show the 6-day leak was followed by a four-month period of burning of the leaking gas, suggesting a gas well blowout to be the cause of the leak. We find similar source rate quantifications from plume detections by Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-2 for these leaks, demonstrating Sentinel-3's utility for emission quantification. We show that zooming in with Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-2 in synergy allows precise identification, quantification, and monitoring of the sources corresponding to methane plumes observed in Sentinel-5p's global scans.