Success Story

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using the Gridded National Inventory of U.S. Methane Emissions, a dataset developed by CMS Principal Investigator Daniel Jacob and his team at Harvard University. The gridded inventory of US anthropogenic methane emissions has a 0.1° × 0.1° spatial resolution, monthly temporal resolution, and detailed scale-dependent error characterization. The inventory is designed to be consistent with the 2016 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (GHGI) for 2012.

The importance of this dataset and the work from Jacob's team at Harvard is that the CMS data shows large differences with the EDGAR v4.2 global gridded inventory commonly used as a priori estimate in inversions of atmospheric methane observations, and provides an improved basis for inversion of atmospheric methane observations to estimate US methane emissions.

Success Story

Maryland Department of Natural Resources

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The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has been engaging for several years with CMS-funded scientists and leadership to use high-resolution forest carbon monitoring and modeling products to inform the state’s forestry sector, as well as to achieve their climate mitigation goals.

The Maryland state agency has engaged with CMS Science Team Lead and Principal Investigator, George Hurtt, and his team at the University of Maryland to use products such as Lidar-derived above ground biomass, canopy height and canopy cover maps, and carbon sequestration maps to inform the state’s forestry and sequestration sector, and to support forest preservation efforts in the state. Some of the science questions the project continues to address includes what is the potential of forests in the state to gain carbon in the future, and how long will that take.

Success Story

RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute)

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RMI has been working with several CMS projects and scientists to integrate a diverse set of CMS products into their Oil Climate Index plus Gas (OCI+) web tool, which assesses emissions from half of the world’s oil and gas supplies with unparalleled transparency. The OCI+ reveals differences between individual resources and provides important climate intelligence that operators, policymakers, investors, and civil society need to immediately reduce emissions.

The web tool has integrated datasets from CMS-funded projects led by Chris Elvidge, Daniel Jacob, and Riley Duren, amongst others, using data products such as the "Global Gas Flare Survey by Infrared Imagery, VIIRS Nightfire, 2012-2019", and the "Global Inventory of Methane Emissions from Fuel Explotation." The OCI+ webtool is being used for decision-making by stakeholders from all sectors, including the International Energy Agency (IEA), Aramco, Shell, Munich Re, the Norwegian Government, California Air Resources Board, amongst others.