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Research Brief: An improved research and stakeholder tool for monitoring total methane emissions

The Methane Initiative has released a new research brief, summarizing an enhanced tool for identifying and quantifying methane emissions, based on satellite observations.

Satellite observations of atmospheric methane concentrations are a powerful resource for quantifying methane emissions globally. The Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI) is an open-source cloud computing tool for inferring emissions by relating satellite observations to emissions using inverse modeling, a process that, until recently, has required a high level of scientific and technical expertise and large computational resources. Improvements in version 2.0 of the IMI offer significantly enhanced performance and greater usability for researchers and non-experts, enabling a wider range of stakeholders to use satellite data from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) to estimate sector-level methane emissions around the world at resolutions up to 25 square kilometers. Continued development of IMI and other tools to estimate and monitor global methane emission sources is critical for developing effective methane mitigation strategies.