COVID-19 impacts on California methane point source emissions

In the summer of 2020, the AVIRIS-NG airborne imaging spectrometer surveyed Californias San Joaquin Valley and the Los Angeles Basin to identify anthropogenic methane point source plumes, estimate emission rates, and attribute sources to both facilities and emission sectors. These flights were designed to revisit regions previously surveyed by the 2016-2017 California Methane Survey and to assess the impact of COVID-19 on emissions across multiple sectors. For the region flown by both the California Methane Survey and the California COVID campaigns, total emissions from point sources were dramatically lower during the summer 2020 flights. However, emission trends varied across different sectors. For example, significant reductions were observed for refineries, which is consistent with a drop in refinery production during 2020. At the oilfield scale, emissions declined for all but the Buena Vista and Cymric oilfields. In contrast, emissions from dairy waste lagoons increased during the COVID period despite a reduction in the total number of observed sources. These results indicate that imaging spectrometer surveys can characterize changes in anthropogenic emission profiles over time, including those associated with disruptive events like COVID-19. Mitigation examples that resulted from sharing methane plume imagery will also be highlighted. Figure 1: Regions flown by both the California Methane Survey and the California COVID campaign indicated by cyan outlines for the San Joaquin Valley (left panel) and the Los Angeles Basin (right panel). Methane plume locations are shown in white for California Methane Survey (2016-2017) and red for the California COVID campaign (summer 2020).