Investigating Major Sources of Methane Emissions at US Landfills
Tia R Scarpelli, Daniel H Cusworth, Riley M Duren, Jinsol Kim, Joseph Heckler, Gregory P Asner, Eben Thoma, Max J Krause, Daniel Heins, Susan Thorneloe · 2024
Read Investigating Major Sources of Methane Emissions at US Landfills by Tia R Scarpelli, Daniel H Cusworth, Riley M Duren, Jinsol Kim, Joseph Heckler, Gregory P Asner, Eben Thoma, Max J Krause, Daniel Heins, Susan Thorneloe (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-11636198.txt.
Description
Tia Scarpelli and co-authors used aircraft surveys to find where methane actually escapes from United States landfills. Landfills are major methane sources, but operators cannot fix leaks they cannot locate. Planes carrying remote sensors flew over 217 landfills in seventeen states during 2023.
More than half of the emitting sites leaked from the work face, the active area where fresh waste is tipped, rather than from gas collection gear. Those sites were often the biggest emitters, and together they produced about seventy-nine percent of all observed emissions. Sites paired with renewable gas plants figured prominently. The pattern implies capture systems miss most gas where waste is freshest. Targeting the work face could cut landfill methane fast.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Tia R Scarpelli, Daniel H Cusworth, Riley M Duren, Jinsol Kim, Joseph Heckler, Gregory P Asner, Eben Thoma, Max J Krause, Daniel Heins, Susan Thorneloe |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 50 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |