Seasonality and Declining Intensity of Methane Emissions

Daniel Varon, Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the lead author of a newly-published paper:

The paper is available without a subscription here.

Prior to July 2025, Varon was a Research Associate in the research group of Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Harvard University. Professor Jacob is a co-author, as are a number of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in the group.

The Harvard Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions provided support for the research.

Summary

Researchers quantified weekly methane emissions and trends from oil and gas production in the US Permian Basin for 2019–2023, and in nearby basins for 2022–2023, by analytical inversion of Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) satellite observations with the Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI) at 25 km resolution. Permian oil and gas emissions averaged 4.0 ± 1.1 Tg a^–1 over 2019–2023, with large seasonal variation but little interannual variability. Methane intensity fell from 5.2 to 3.2% as production surged. Intensity in the New Mexico Permian fell from 4.5 to 2.1%, approaching the state’s 2026 target of <2%. Emissions were on average 50 ± 10% higher in winter than summer, which we corroborate with Permian Basin Tower Network measurements, Insight M aircraft data, and GHGSat satellite observations.

This seasonality may be driven in part by higher winter emissions from liquid storage tanks due to decreased separator efficiency in cold conditions. Similar but weaker seasonality along with decreasing emissions and intensities is found in weekly inversions for the Anadarko, Barnett, Eagle Ford, and Haynesville basins in 2022–2023. The research suggests that better weatherization of oil and gas facilities could significantly reduce methane emissions