Premium
Source Partitioning of Methane Emissions and its Seasonality in the U.S. Midwest
Author(s) -
Chen Zichong,
Griffis Timothy J.,
Baker John M.,
Millet Dylan B.,
Wood Jeffrey D.,
Dlugokencky Edward J.,
Andrews Arlyn E.,
Sweeney Colm,
Hu Cheng,
Kolka Randall K.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: biogeosciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8961
pISSN - 2169-8953
DOI - 10.1002/2017jg004356
Subject(s) - environmental science , seasonality , atmospheric sciences , flux (metallurgy) , methane , sink (geography) , wetland , methane emissions , atmospheric methane , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , chemistry , geography , ecology , geology , cartography , geotechnical engineering , organic chemistry , biology
The methane (CH 4 ) budget and its source partitioning are poorly constrained in the Midwestern United States. We used tall tower (185 m) aerodynamic flux measurements and atmospheric scale factor Bayesian inversions to constrain the monthly budget and to partition the total budget into natural (e.g., wetlands) and anthropogenic (e.g., livestock, waste, and natural gas) sources for the period June 2016 to September 2017. Aerodynamic flux observations indicated that the landscape was a CH 4 source with a mean annual CH 4 flux of +13.7 ± 0.34 nmol m −2 s −1 and was rarely a net sink. The scale factor Bayesian inversion analyses revealed a mean annual source of +12.3 ± 2.1 nmol m −2 s −1 . Flux partitioning revealed that the anthropogenic source (7.8 ± 1.6 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ) was 1.5 times greater than the bottom‐up gridded United States Environmental Protection Agency inventory, in which livestock and oil/gas sources were underestimated by 1.8‐fold and 1.3‐fold, respectively. Wetland emissions (4.0 ± 1.2 Tg CH 4 yr −1 ) were the second largest source, accounting for 34% of the total budget. The temporal variability of total CH 4 emissions was dominated by wetlands with peak emissions occurring in August. In contrast, emissions from oil/gas and other anthropogenic sources showed relatively weak seasonality.