Updated Carbon Mapper Data Portal Offers Methane Emissions Transparency

Carbon Mapper has released its new Data Portal featuring methane point source data from airborne surveys spanning Fall 2016 through summer 2021. 

The Carbon Mapper Data Portal, available at carbonmapper.org/data, provides free access to methane data sets and analytics to help advance the collective understanding of methane emissions so that they can be more successfully mitigated. The release is part of the Bloomberg Carbon Mapper Accelerator Program announced last month.

The Portal now features data sets that span selected areas and facilities in California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Texas, Louisiana, the Gulf of Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York. This new data set includes the results of airborne studies funded by NASA, the University of Arizona, the California Air Resources Board, RMI, EDF, and the US Climate Alliance.

Other notable data updates and insights now available include: 

• Three years of data from Permian Basin surveys which allows regulators, operators, and others to identify persistent super-emitters associated with oil and gas production. 
• First-of-their-kind methane remote-sensing ocean observations using a prototype ‘glint mode’ that enables the tracking of methane emissions from offshore oil and gas platforms and some categories of ocean-going vessels.  
• Methane emissions from coal venting, an under-observed but significant and persistent source of methane emissions.  
• New observations of methane emissions from chemical plants along the Gulf Coast and “Cancer Alley” (in Louisiana where, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they have the 6th highest rate of cancer cases between 2014 and 2018).
• Expanded coverage of landfills, manure management and pipeline leaks.

“The Carbon Mapper Data Portal makes sources of emissions visible with unprecedented precision, resolution and coverage,” said Judy Lai-Norling, Carbon Mapper Chief Operating Officer. “This emissions transparency is particularly timely given the global focus on curbing methane emissions to solve the climate crisis at the COP26 summit and elsewhere. Decision makers can freely access and use this data to drive impactful action and cut emissions now.” 

Users can browse methane plume images based on emission rate (the amount of methane emissions observed at the time of each overflight) or geographic location.

Future upgrades will allow users to batch download data for multiple plumes with custom search parameters. Ultimately, this portal will be upgraded to deliver global point source emissions data from the first two Carbon Mapper satellites which will be available mid-late 2023.

Carbon Mapper aims to persistently pinpoint, quantify, and track strong methane and carbon dioxide emissions at a facility scale, and make this data freely available to inform science-based action. This new Data Portal is a key way Carbon Mapper is delivering on this promise. 

Browse the data at carbonmapper.org/data and subscribe at ​​https://carbonmapper.org/contact-us/ to receive real-time alerts of new data availability.