Attribution of individual methane and carbon dioxide emission sources using 5 EMIT observations from space

Carbon dioxide and methane emissions are the two primary anthropogenic climate-forcing agents and an important source of uncertainty in the global carbon budget. Uncertainties are further magnified when emissions occur at fine spatial scales (<1 km), making attribution challenging. We present the first observations from NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) imaging spectrometer showing quantification and attribution of fine-scale methane (0.3-73 t CH4 hr-1) and carbon dioxide sources (1571-3511 t CO2 hr-1 35 ) spanning the oil & gas, waste, and energy sectors. For selected countries observed during the first 30 days of EMIT operations, methane emissions varied significantly at a regional scale with the largest total emissions observed for Turkmenistan (731±148 t CH4 hr-1 38 ). These results highlight the contributions of current and planned point source imagers in closing global carbon budgets.